Microsoft to buy Linked-In

June 13th, 2016 by Stephen Jones No comments »

Microsoft is buying the professional social network LinkedIn for $26.2 billion (£18.5bn), the two companies have announced.
The news, announced on Monday afternoon, instantly sent LinkedIn’s share price soaring by 48% percent. The deal will represent one of the biggest in Microsoft’s history.

Microsoft said LinkedIn boss Jeff Weiner will stay in charge and report to Satya Nadella.
“The LinkedIn team has grown a fantastic business centered on connecting the world’s professionals,” Nadella said. “Together we can accelerate the growth of LinkedIn, as well as Microsoft Office 365 and Dynamics as we seek to empower every person and organization on the planet.”

For Microsoft, it’s bringing a key, missing piece into the company’s strategy to build out more services for enterprises. “The LinkedIn team has grown a fantastic business centered on connecting the world’s professionals,” Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, said.

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Posted in Dubai and regional news, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics Ax, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, SharePoint and EPM, Technology

Support for Microsoft Dynamics in the U.A.E. – Dubai – and the G.C.C and more -Synergy Software Systems

June 9th, 2016 by Stephen Jones No comments »

“Go with Synergy and sleep at night.”

That mantra was propagated by our customers in the 90s and is still the message today – that is why:
– we have many customers who have been with us over 10 years and some over 15 years.
– we received the Highest Customer Satisfaction Award from Microsoft
– we attained President’s Club status (top 5% of Partners globally)
– we are the only Dynamics Ax partner in the Middle East accepted into Ax Pact
– we are the only Middle East Dynamics partner to attend Connect at Seattle last year
– we regularly work with Microsoft’ s global platinum partners to assist their deployments in this region.

The reasons are simple.
Our business is built on support, not on selling licenses.
We don’t outsource,
We don’t use temporary staff
We don’t use freelancers
All our consultants are centralized, in large modern offices, in the heart of Dubai
We support customers globally with web dial in and screens sharing.
We maintain a support infrastructure for testing, patching analysis.
We participate in the Microsoft TAP programme for beta testing
Even the support receptionist is a Microsoft certified consultant
We support an manned CRM helpdesk -even the
If we can’t support it ourselves then we don’t implement
Those who implement and our know your people and your business and your build are there to support you.
We have the depth and breadth of skills that a small company cannot offer.
On average our consultants have more than 10 years experience
Our Dynamics team has more than 300 man years of relevant experience and numerous certifications

Synergy Software Systems -“Working together”
Find out why so many companies have benefitted from our post implementation project review to stablise their system to provide a firm platform to take them forward, so that they can leverage the full power of Microsoft Dynamics.
Let us help you to sleep at night.

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Posted in Corporate Perfomance Management, Hospitality, HR and Payroll, Infor Financial solutions, Microsoft Dynamics Ax, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Project Management, RFID biometric mobile, SharePoint and EPM, Sunsystems and Vision, Technology

Windows 10 _ last chance for free upgrade -Redstone

June 9th, 2016 by Stephen Jones No comments »

The free Windows 10 upgrade offer for consumer editions will end on July 29, Microsoft warns.
The Windows 10 Anniversary Update (Redstone 1) will be released in late July,

In early January, just five months after making Windows 10 generally available, the Microsoft reported that the OS had already hit the 200-million-device mark, significantly outpacing the growth trajectories of both Windows 8 and Windows 7. Microsoft’s goal is to put Windows 10 on 1 billion devices by fiscal 2018,

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Posted in Microsoft, Technology

Dynamics Ax RTW – May 2016 release

June 9th, 2016 by Stephen Jones No comments »

Microsoft dynamics AX RTW is referred to as Cloud First and Mobile First
(note Microsoft has dropped version numbers because the intention is as with Dynamics CRM and LCS to update regularly and releases are more likely to be called e.g. ‘May 2016 update”. RTW stands for ‘release to web’ and has replaced the initial Ax7 terminology.)

The first update after RTW release of the New Dynamics AX back in Feb, 2016 is now available for download and deployment via LCS. Uou can deploy the Microsoft Dynamics AX May 2016 Update from LCS. For guidance see https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/lcs/2016/05/27/may-2016-release-notes/
When you select a topology for deployment in the partner project workspace or in Cloud hosted environment in customer implementation project, you can select either RTW or the May Update (Update 1).

To see the new features refer to this Ax wiki article https://ax.help.dynamics.com/en/wiki/whats-new-or-changed-in-dynamics-ax-7/

Cloud first in dynamics AX RTW refers to the new cloud optimized platform for public / private deployments. Dynamics AX RTW takes complete advantage of Microsoft Azure cloud platform which allows users to access is at any time and from anywhere from almost any device.

Microsoft is aiding “productivity by empowering people and has made sure the there is no difference in user experience no matter what device they use to access Dynamics AX RTW. Microsoft dynamics AX RTW can be accessed from any smart phone at any time. Dynamics AX RTW UI is specifically designed to be accessed with ease from any mobile without using mouse/keyboard.

No need to install Dynamics AX in devices to access it. The latest Dynamics AX is built in HTML5 which is accessible through web-based client. In simple words, a web browser is all you need to access the new Dynamics AX.

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Posted in Microsoft Dynamics Ax

Management Reporter- here today, gone tomorrow?? Try Prophix.

June 5th, 2016 by Stephen Jones No comments »

Recently, in two separate announcements, Microsoft has stated that they will no longer develop their Forecaster budgeting tool and their Management Reporter financial report writer. How does this impact the almost 200,000 Dynamics AX, GP, SL and NAV customers out there? Well its not just going to go away, but it looks like it will not get too many more upgrades or new features.

Jet Reports has partnered with Microsoft to launch Jet Express for Excel for Dynamics GP, designed to help users create Excel-based reports tied to their ERP data. Jet Express for Excel with Microsoft Dynamics GP will be available free as a download in June of 2016 directly from the Jet Reports website, according to Jon Oesch, VP of Sales, Jet Reports.

Dynamics NAV. Management Reporter has not supported NAV for a while and most customers look to best-of-breed third party solutions with a live NAV integration, such as Excel-based report writers

When it comes to Dynamics SL (supported with live reporting by BI360, BizNet, etc.), Management Reporter (MR) will also leave a void, but I don’t think SL customers will feel deprived if they have to leave the proprietary row and column report design screens of MR and instead, design their reports with modern Excel add-ins and all the formatting and calculation functionality of Excel at their disposal.

In the case of Dynamics AX, there were a lot of database changes with AX2012 and later versions, and Management Reporter’s (MR) older, pre-dominantly FRx-based technology never really caught up to run smoothly, even with the introduction of MR’s staging database outside of AX.

With MR only offering General Ledger reporting, AX customers, often larger companies with complex reporting requirements, were left with the need to combine MR with the native AX report writer, SQL Reporting Services (SSRS), AX OLAP cubes, etc., to get a complete reporting solution.

Make no doubt about it – other AX competitors like Oracle and SAP are in the same boat with a plethora of reporting tools needed.

If this is the end of further MR development, AX customers must look to third party solutions to put in place a more unified, best of breed solution for their BI and CPM needs e.g. Prophix, Atlas, BI4Dynamics. With Power BI from Microsoft, (and Datazen) there are plenty of dashboard and visualization options, predominantly in the cloud, as well.

While it is nice for current Dynamics customers to get free or almost free financial reporting and budgeting software from Microsoft, it will never spur the innovation and focus that third party, best-of-breed solutions can offer.
Microsoft will now presumably focus on their core ERP offerings and ERP cloud initiatives, like AX7 and the upcoming Madeira solutions, and leave behind the complaints and noise around MR and Forecaster, while leaning on their community of partners and Independent Software Vendors to give their Dynamics customers a financial reporting and budgeting solution.

Business Intelligence and Corporate Performance Management are always red hot topics for organizations. These Microsoft announcements mean that Microsoft Dynamics customers need to explore third party, best-of-breed solutions to solve their reporting needs. We see it as difficult to claim to be an enterprise solution without such support, especially for financial consolidation but competitors generally seem t rely on specialist add on tools. MR may have its drawbacks but it was a winner with

However a BI/CPM roadmap to expand from just reporting to include integrated budgeting and forecasting, as well as financial consolidation , with dashboards and data warehousing to combine Dynamics data with other data sources, for rich planning and analysis, and ultimately, superior decision-making capabilities is still a big question with many partial answers.

We think Prophix CPM with Power BI is one of the better options to consider especially for the multi-company , multi-geography groups of companies that are addressed by Dynamics Ax

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Posted in Corporate Perfomance Management, Microsoft Dynamics Ax

Microsoft warns of new self propagating ransomware – Ransom:Win32/ZCryptor.A

May 31st, 2016 by Stephen Jones No comments »

The new ransomware, which Microsoft has dubbed Ransom:Win32/ZCryptor.A, is distributed through spam emails. It can also infect a machine running Windows through a malware installer or fake installers like a Flash player setup file.
The ransomware would run at boot and drop :
• a file autorun.inf in removable drives,
• a zycrypt.lnk in the start-up folder,
• and a copy of itself as {Drive}:\system.exe and %APPDATA%\zcrypt.exe.
It will then change the file attributes to hide itself from the user in file explorer.
The Microsoft advisory said a file headlined “All your personal files are encrypted” would be displayed to the user and the ransomware would encrypt numerous files, changing their extensions to .zcrypt in the process. A total of 88 file-types would be encrypted and Microsoft said it was important to enable file history, or system protection so that restoring personal files from a backup was possible in some cases. However, it appears that Microsoft was also not fully aware of the actions of the ransomware because it offered the following advice: “Some ransomware will also encrypt or delete the backup versions and will not allow you to do the actions described before. If this is the case, you need to rely on backups in external drives (not affected by the ransomware) or OneDrive.”

Windows users take care.

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Posted in Microsoft, Security and Compliance, Technology

Dynamics CRM – Sales, Service, and Marketing

May 25th, 2016 by Stephen Jones No comments »

Customer relationship management (CRM) is the systematic oversight and maintenance of consumer relationships, and the data, sales, and engagements that go a long with it. CRM systems and applications help businesses easily organize and track customer information, all in one place.

The process of engaging customers can’t be one-size-fits-all. It needs to be adaptive across all touch points and within the context of who your customer is and what they are doing. Intelligent customer engagement enables your company to build customer trust, loyalty, and insight, while also enabling your sales, service, and marketing professionals to be as productive as possible.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM helps companies deliver exceptional customer experiences, creating long-term relationships based on knowledge and trust.

CRM tools centralize customer information, automate marketing interactions, provide business intelligence, and facilitate communications for increased productivity. A CRM product tracks opportunities your sales force is pursuing, analyzes data, and helps deliver superior customer service.

Customer relationship management solutions make the customer-facing functions of business easier. Running a successful business is no simple task. When marketing campaigns, data analysis, meetings, customer care, and more all happen simultaneously, you need something more powerful than a bevy of individual apps. A CRM solution brings all these functions together in one place.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a business app that helps you track all your customer interactions and data. With Dynamics CRM, you can easily share customer information with all your people, through multiple channels. Everyone in your company has the full picture of what your customers want and need.

Dynamics CRM easily works with programs you already know how to use. Simple integration with Outlook makes communication management a breeze. Email campaigns can be automated and Excel spreadsheets can be imported without losing formatting.

Dynamics CRM offers best-in-class features to grow your business’s efficiency and productivity. Manage calendars with your own Cortana personal assistant. Use customer data to gain the insights you need to qualify prospects. Learn what your customers really think with Microsoft Social Engagement. Microsoft Dynamics CRM helps improve the management of your business, so you can focus on the most important part- your customers.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online provide a powerful business application platform. Check out this video to see how you can find your way around the Sales, Service, and Marketing areas within Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

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Posted in Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Management Reporter 2012 CU15 RTM (version 2.12.15001.56) and CU15 Hotfix

May 23rd, 2016 by Stephen Jones No comments »

Management Reporter 2012 CU15 RTM (version 2.12.15001.56) – the CU15 Hotfix is formally released and ready for customers.
3751976- CU15 Issue – Data is missing on reports when using wildcards or ranges
The hotfix will prompt for a reboot of the server during installation. The hotfix will not change the version number of Management Reporter Server or Client components.
Version History
Management Reporter CU15 RTM – 2.12.15001.56
Management Reporter CU15 Hotfix 3749486-3751976 – 2.12.15001.56
The hotfix has been posted to CustomerSource.

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Posted in Corporate Perfomance Management, Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics Ax

Dynamics AX 2012 R3, CU11 coming soon to Dubai ask Synergy Software Systems

May 23rd, 2016 by Stephen Jones No comments »

The latest update to Dynamics AX 2012 R3, CU11, will be available in July 2016.

The CU11 update will include will include more than 50 new features and design changes covering 4 major areas: Retail, Supply Chain Management, Warehouse Management, and Regulatory updates.

Specifically, these include,
• Retail- Design changes and new features including updates to POS and MPOS.
• Supply Chain Management- Enhancements to master planning.
• Warehouse Management- Enhancements that cover the warehouse mobile device portal and more efficient picking and shipment operations.
• Regulatory updates – To provide compliance with local and regional legislation.

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Posted in Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics Ax, Project Management, Security and Compliance, SQL

Windows 7 lives on a little longer

May 18th, 2016 by Stephen Jones No comments »

Microsoft yesterday announced the release of the Windows 7 SP1 convenience rollup, a collection of security and other updates for the seven-year-old operating system. The release includes core Windows fixes, security fixes and hot fixes that have been issued since Service Pack 1 was released in 2011 and is designed to simplify the updating process.

Microsoft’s decision to release the bundle is a departure from the firm’s stance earlier this year, when it said it had no news on the promised convenience rollup of fixes for Windows 7, stressing instead “the success our customers are experiencing upgrading to Windows 10”.

At the beginning of the year, Microsoft announced it would phase out support for Windows 7 and 8 on new PC hardware. The move seemed designed to encourage businesses not to downgrade new Windows 10 machines to an earlier OS, as has been common in the past in order to standardize corporate hardware. However, Microsoft later watered down the plans, pushing back the point at which it will end full extended support for Windows 7 and 8.1 machines running on Intel’s Skylake CPUs.

Many organizations are still in the early planning stage when it comes to Windows 10 and in a recession curtailing costs today may mean more than cutting costs over the next 12 month. Most of the PCs running Windows 10 today are in the consumer segment of the market, and tWindows 7 is probably running on 80 percent-plus business Windows PCs it is estimated.

“Microsoft has to find ways to please and delight enterprise customers, and ease the burden on IT departments. The Anniversary Edition update to Windows 10 will drive upgrades by early adopters, but mass adoption is still some way off, more like mid-2017 through to 2020. Unless organizations will have a clear insight into its business value e.g. to add key business features such as Enterprise Data Protection .

Gartner had predicted that adoption of Windows 10 by business would be “significantly more rapid” than that of Windows 7 but this year it was more cautious, claiming that flat IT budgets are pushing the start of enterprise migrations back to 2017.

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Posted in Microsoft, Technology