• Kyre@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    You all have no idea the idiocy of their naming and the confusion it causes with their business software: Microsoft Dynamics - This is an array of business software. Some of it is the same core platform with different features but many of the applications are acquisitions and run on different back-end platforms.

    Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Customer relationship Management). They originally named their software to be the name of what it actually does. Not a bad idea so when people searched for that name, results would point to their software eventually. This is their Salesforce competitor.

    After building market and name recognition and gaining market space, they renamed it to Dynamics Customer Engagement (CE). Then soon after split the product into modules or sub-products and called them: Dynamics 365 Sales, Dynamics 365 Customer Service, Dynamics 365 Field Service (which was a module acquired by Microsoft but was originally called field one sky), Dynamics 365 Project Operations (which was originally called Project Service Automation).

    They had MDM (Microsoft Dynamics Marketing) which was an email marketing platform. This MDM is not to be confused with MDM (Mobile data management) but was actually just the first iteration of their marketing tool. They re-wrote it from scratch and called it “Dynamics Marketing”. They then re-wrote it a third time (they are in the process of finishing the re-write) and it is now called “Microsoft Dynamics Customer Insights and Journey’s”. A name that just rolls right off the tongue.

    Accounting Software Microsoft GP - This was a Microsoft software acquisition of accounting software called “GP”. Microsoft has been the steward of this project for a very long time but it is currently being phased out and is in end-of-life. Microsoft SL - Another acquisition. Accounting software called Solomon. Microsoft still sells and support this software. It serves a particular niche. Microsoft F&BO - This is a complicated one so I am just going to map out the names of what it was and what it has become but this is Microsoft’s SAP/Oracle competitor for large organizations: Axapta -> Dynamics AX -> Dynamics Finance and Operations (F&O) -> Dynamics Finance and Operations and Supply Chain -> Dynamics Finance and Business Operations (F&BO) Microsoft BC - Microsoft Business Central was originally acquired by Microsoft as “Navision”. They renamed it Microsoft NAV and more recently re-wrote and re-named it to Microsoft Business Central (BC).

    Long post but they really just suck at names and rename things constantly. From the business side, I think it’s intentional as it causes people to re-evaluate the software without any baggage from the name.