Last week, the community that sells, implements and supports Dynamics 365 Business Central in the EMEA region gathered in Milan, Italy for their annual partner conference. After two years from online contacts only, this was the first time this partner community had the possibility to meet in person again. The 3 day conference attracted 1.600 professionals and was completely sold out. The partners loved hearing Microsoft’s plans to further improve and expand Dynamics 365 Business Central; Microsoft’s successful cloud ERP solutions for small and midsized companies. And to discuss how they can further improve their services and implementations to make their customers the winners of digital transformation.
Directions EMEA is the annual conference organized for and by Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC partners. The event in Milan was the 14th edition and it collected 1.600 Dynamics 365 BC professionals from more than 40 different countries in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region.
The most striking news at this conference came from Mike Morton, Microsoft’s general manager for Dynamics 365 Business Central. On the first day he announced the strong and unparalleled growth of Business Central. The number of customers worldwide has doubled from 10.000 to 20.000 organizations since 2020. And that is a tenfold (!) increase compared to 2019.
Continues growth was a central theme throughout the whole conference. Microsoft reported a spectacular increase in the number of localized Business Central country versions from 49 to 69. The number of active Dynamics 365 Business Central resellers grew with 50 percent from 2.200 to 3.300, covering many more than 100 different countries all over the world. And the number of certified apps on AppSource increased with no less than 80 percent to 1.800. These are all important variables that point to an even stronger growth for Dynamics 365 Business Central in the coming years.
Microsoft also showed the audience that it is making significant progress in its efforts to make new implementations and upgrades both simpler, faster and cheaper.
In summary: Dynamics 365 Business Central and its partner ecosystem is a very attractive candidate for companies looking for a modern ERP system. And that applies to both the current users of Dynamics NAV (aka Navision) and to organizations that are not Microsoft customers yet.
