In 2025, Microsoft Dynamics will focus on AI agents, Jason Gumpert says. He’s the editor of MSDynamicsWorld, the leading Microsoft Business Applications-focused digital trade magazine.
“(Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella) sees the long-term vision for Dynamics as being all about autonomous agents,” Jason says. Microsoft’s plan, Jason suggests, is to eliminate Dynamics users’ old thought processes. They’ll take the “forms over data” and “business logic” ideals out of the middle layer and front end. Once the AI understands the database layers across the various business applications and silos, it can take away those database layers too. Then, Dynamics will exist as a collection of AI agents with a unified data model underneath. Really, Dynamics will go away. Everything will go away.
It’ll be “all agents all the way down,” he says.
“(Satya Nadella) used the word ‘collapse,’” Jason continues. “He said, ‘Dynamics will collapse into AI agents.’ It was kind of inflammatory language.”
Jason is quick to point out that Nadella’s expressive rhetoric shouldn’t be taken as a warning, though.
“My take was not that Microsoft has any specific plan to get rid of Dynamics apps,” he clarifies. “I think that the CEO was talking without the input of product marketing teams or anything like that. Certainly not Partners.”
Microsoft Business Applications MVP Rick McCutcheon also believes business applications will change in the coming years. However, he also thinks the industry is still in the early stages of its transition and that Partners still have much to do with their customers. After all, Microsoft provides the framework for innovation, but Partners actually have to execute it.
“Customers are still at the front end of the early adopters’ stage,” Rick says. He thinks they’ll remain there at least until they get their systems migrated to the cloud, and their data models figured out.
Partners must balance being excited about the future and talking to their clients and customers using language that doesn’t scare them away. For customers, AI agents are scary. Customers can’t change everything overnight because they need to keep their businesses running.
For them, Rick says, it’s “like changing the wheels on a car while it drives.”
People are still wrapping their heads around AI and its capabilities, security, and privacy concerns. Within the next year, the more forward-thinking people may want to pull the trigger, but first, they must sell the idea to the rest of their organization.
And learning to sell is its own can of worms.
Watch Rick and Jason discuss the topic for yourself: