David Singleton's Navision Blog

Boeing 787 Dreamliner part 2.

OK, so back to computers. Well often we do hear comparisons between the evolution of computers, aircraft and cars. Mostly they are somewhat arbitrary, but still.

This year we saw the release of Vista and Office 2007. Later we will see never versions of Great Plains 10 and Navision 5.1. In terms of revolution, 5.1 is revolutionary, it is as big a jump as the jump from Dos to Windows. 

But when most people think of Office 2007 and Vista, its much like the 787, just another upgrade. Both Vista and Office 2007 look very much different than their predecessors, but really that is barely scratching the surface of what these products deliver. In fact they introduce a whole new way of delivering for Microsoft.

The biggest change in Office 2007 in my opinion, is the "one version of the truth" concept. The idea that data is secure not only form outsiders, but even form those inside. Its now possible to email a spread sheet to 100 people, then go to a meeting and have just one version of the data in the presentation. In our ERP world, this ability of people to simply take data and manipulate it in excel was a tough nut to crack.

What has happened, is that instead of having isolated desktop applications on isolated desktops, we now have a truly integrated office environment. And those companies that think "we will wait for the next version" need to take a close look at 2007 and what it offers. Personally I think MS are doing too much hype in the "user experience" areas, and not showing off enough of what is going on in the back ground.
 

And then we have Navision. This next version (which we hope will be released some time this year) will change the way we think about ERP in the Navision world. No longer will we be able to think of ourselves as C/SIDE developers. More and more, C/SIDE will be come less and less important. We will be soon able to hand off parts of Work Flow to the user though MOSS (Microsoft Office Share Point Server). And users will control their own User Interface.

 
Looking further into the future, I see that Microsoft will have to radically change licensing policies, even more so than they did with Business Ready. I see that licensing will be a concept of what he users uses, so you will buy 10 Credit controller CALs that will allow them access to AR, Customer, Excel, Outlook etc. The company may be running Navision, CRM and Great Plains in different divisions, but all the user will care is that they have a CAL that allows them access to the  Customer card.

But more importantly will be that there will be multiple VARs and multiple ISVs working together. There is no way that existing Navision VARs can deliver both the depth and breadth of technology that is needed, There will be many new opportunities for smaller VARs to go Vertical, and outsource all the components of the system, with them understanding he clients business needs, and relying on independent partners to deliver the components.

 
This is a great and exciting time for us. Get out there and look at the new technology that is coming at us. Knowledge of business process will be closely tied to the ability to integrate multiple technologies to solve issues, and we will rely less and less on the huge volume of customized code that we see now.

Will we go to bigger aircraft with Hubs and Spokes, or will we see 50 seat jets that can fly half way around the world non stop. And will we see more and more bespoke systems with lots of custom code, or will we see systems that integrate multiple systems into business solutions?

Boeing 787 Dreamliner part 1.

So why is a Dynamics MVP writing a blog about an airplane? Well read on...

 
I am currently in Seattle, after the MVP Summit here. There is very little I can say about the Summit, since just about everything is covered by our NDA. This is the most awesome event that Microsoft organize. And being a part of it, is an experience of a life time.

Although most of the event is technical, we also get time to party. Our biggest non technical event is dinner at the Boeing Museum Of Aviation. Oddly at the museum, there is no 787 display, not even an exhibit (that I could find) about it, but it definitely is the buzz word now.

When you look at any major industry, there are evolutions and revolutions. This applies to the Aircraft industry as much as it applies to the IT industry. Although we all like to look at technology, and the latest and greatest, what really matters is acceptance. The greatest advance in technology is pretty pointless if it is not accepted and adopted by users. 

In the heavier than air craft industry, the biggest revolution was made by the wright brothers. Ignoring the fact that they were only days ahead of everyone else, their true impact on the industry was the application of science to aeronautics. They didn't just throw and engine on a bit of wood, and fly, they did studies of wind flow, and horsepower and thrust, and designed something on paper that would break new grounds in science. The trivial issue of being the first to fly was just a culmination of many years of testing and trying and research. Their development and use of the wind tunnel is probably the single most important contribution to science they ever made, but it is trivialized.

The evolution that made this science useful, was getting passengers and payloads into the air. it was only a small step from the original 112ft flight in 1903, but no technology is useful unless it is used. In terms of revolutions evolution, the revolutions that change technology are no where near as important as the evolutions that bring that technology into our homes and our workplaces and our lives.

 
For us as "users" we see significant milestones as Passenger flight, Crossing Countries, Crossing Oceans, Pressurized Cabins, Jet Engines, and until now thats about it. Revolutions happen a lot in this industry, as do technological evolutions that really don't affect us. I mean how do evolutions like Turbo Fans affect you directly? So the next revolution that will evolve into something that affects us will be hypersonic or hyperbolic space flights. The idea of going into space and then getting anywhere in the world in a few hours. Well to me that's junk anyway. I often need to get from home to Northern New Jersy. I live in the mountains a long way from a major airport, so get up at 5.00am, for a flight that takes off at 12:30 I arrive at JFK at 4:30, and arrive at the hotel at around 8pm. So (completely ignoring time zones), I spend a whole day traveling, and in reality the small bit on the airplane where I sleep just is not an important part of the travel. Whats worse is if we go to these Hypersonic type technologies, it means using Hubs, which I guess for me would be Heathrow. So in the end I might get to my hotel an hour earlier. (or something useless like that). For sure this will help people that live in Slough and need to get to Queens. But how does it help the average person. With the internet, I want to be able to live in a small town, and work for another company in a small town, and just get there. I don't want to get a cab to a train to a station via cab to the airport to hub, to another hub, to another small airport, to a cab to a hotel. All that matters to me is how long it takes from getting out of bed, to being in front of the client.

 
So the 787, so what is so special. Well rivets. Yep little bits of aluminum, that we all see when we look out the windows. Well when you fly on a 787 you wont see them.  Rivets have been around for a very long time. ANd oddly enough, construction of the 787 is closer to World War One planes using wooden frames and doped cloth than it is to the most modern airliners today. back then cloth or even paper, was tightly stretched around a wooden frame. "Dope" was then applied, this was type of varnish, except that when it dried it shrunk, and thus added a lot of strength to the cloth. So the cloth was not only an aerodynamic component of the plane, but also structural. Now a days, we use aluminum riveted together. But rivets do two things, one they weigh a lot, and second, they add a lot of wind resistance and drag. So the move to Carbon fiber in the 787 basically is all about replacing rivets.

 
Ooooohhhh kkaaayyyy but what on earth does that matter to me.
 So I wont see rivets out the window. But really what it means is less fuel to take off (because of the weight of the rivets) and less fuel in flight (because of the reduced wind resistance). And this means that a small aircraft can now fly long distances. So just ignore the 787, but encompass the concept and the evolution. Since it now means we can see in a few years, even smaller airplanes, taking off from more and smaller airports, going to more an more places.

I for one would rather a direct flight on a 787 even if it is 3 hours longer, than have to spend 5 hours getting to a hub where I can catch an A380.

Rivets, its all about rivets.

This blog is in two parts... part 2 is on the way... (actually only because they need to clean my room, so  need to leave the  hotel for a while) hmm maybe three parts. But the Dynamics bit is coming.