​Partners pivotal as Microsoft Dynamics 365 arrives in Australia

Simon Davies - VP of Asia, Microsoft Business Services

Microsoft has officially unveiled Dynamics 365 to the global market, with the cloud-based suite of purpose-built business applications now available in Australia.

Underpinned by intelligence, Dynamics 365 offers a single, scalable toolkit for businesses to address specific needs, such as sales automation, operations, field and customer service, all backed by advanced analytics and machine learning.

“Microsoft has operated in Australia for over 31 years, and during that time we’ve seen an immense amount of innovation built on top of our platform by customers and partners alike,” Microsoft Business Services vice president of Asia, Simon Davies, said.

“Dynamics 365 has been engineered specifically to help organisations deliver compelling and personalised experiences through every phase of their customer relationships.”

Davies said Australian appetite for Microsoft's latest offering is strong, with NSW Trustee & Guardian, KPMG and BUPA already deploying Dynamics 365 solutions locally.

“As diverse organisations like NSW Trustee & Guardian, KPMG and BUPA speak to us about the measurable business results their already seeing with Dynamics, we’re excited to see how the solution will steer their digital transformation in the future,” he added.

Available through Enterprise and Business Editions, Davies said Dynamics 365 will offer subscriptions per app/per user, offering industry-first plans designed to reflect the way organisations and employees work today.

From a channel perspective, local independent software vendor (ISV), AvePoint, has been one of the leading frontrunners in Australia, building AvePoint Citizen Services - a solution for intelligent digital case management, monitoring, and predictive analysis designed for public sector agencies.

“Without Dynamics 365, we couldn’t have quickly built AvePoint Citizen Services,” AvePoint Public Sector CTO, Dux Raymond Sy, said.

“Dynamics 365 is at the core of our solution, facilitating digital transformation and enabling governments to not only respond quickly to citizen requests, but also anticipate issues and pre-plan repairs.

“We see Dynamics 365 being the crucial foundation in developing business solutions that can be made available in AppSource.”

Revealed ahead of Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2016 in July, AppSource is an online store for partners to market and distribute apps, content packs and add-ins.

Billed as the “premier destination” for applications, AppSource plays host to applications working across Dynamics, Office, Power BI and Azure.

Closer to home, UXC Eclipse - now a CSC company - is also another partner on board with Dynamics 365 from the off, reflective of changing customer demands.

“While every conversation with our customers is now around Dynamics 365, the conversations have shifted,” UXC Eclipse director of customer and partner engagement, Andrew Devitt, said.

“They are no longer just a feature/function conversation about ERP or CRM. Each customer engagement is now about identifying specific workload challenges and solving the business problem – the underlying technology is a given.

“This means we are able to drive transformation within our own business as we add new revenue lines.”

For Devitt, the Microsoft stack provides customers with choice, not just in regard to deployment options but also in the ability to simplify processes, which can help them reduce overall IT spend.

“There’s no more comprehensive end to end business solution than what Microsoft is offering today,” he added.

Solutions from Microsoft’s growing base of ISV partners also use this common data model, which means partners can now extend Dynamics 365 capabilities with the unique industry and function specific apps found in AppSource.

Since July, Microsoft has added 100 new apps to the marketplace, allowing customers to discover, trial and evaluate from within Dynamics 365.

In addition, the cloud vendor also announced the general availability of PowerApps and Flow which will be included in Dynamics 365.

PowerApps and Flow join Microsoft Power BI to allow users to build mobile and web applications without coding, automate business processes through configuration, and analyse and visualise business data.