20 May 2002 Employees, managers and channel partners of Danish enterprise applications vendor Navision are “thrilled” that the company is being acquired by software giant Microsoft – but they do not expect to stop developing and selling the company’s Unix-based products, claimed the company’s UK managing director, Fleming Beisner.

“As long as there is business in the Unix area, it would be foolish not to offer Unix products. I definitely expect Navision to continue doing so. While we will have to follow Microsoft’s strategy generally, we will still be a separate business unit with our own strategies,” he said.

However, he insisted that Navision’s primary platform would remain Microsoft Windows NT/2000 – eventually expanding to embrace the Microsoft .Net platform. “Our history of working with Microsoft demonstrates our understanding of and commitment to the .Net platform,” he said.

Even before the deal, he said, Navision had employees on permanent secondment at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington headquarters, and Microsoft engineers are “regular visitors” to Navision’s headquarters, just north of Copenhagen.

Microsoft announced its plans to buy Navision for $1.33 billion (€1.45bn) in early May 2002. The deal follows Microsoft’s acquisition in 2000 of another supplier of enterprise software applications for small and medium-sized organisations, Great Plains, and will strengthen Microsoft’s presence in the European enterprise applications market.

As part of Microsoft, added Beisner, Navision will find it easier to achieve an internal three-year goal to double revenues by July 2005. In its last financial year, Navision posted revenues up 19% to DKK849 million (€114.3 million), a performance boosted by extra work driven by the change to the new Euro currency in several countries, and by Navision’s acquisition of rival Damgaard in May 2000.