The Future of FRx and Management Reporter (for GLs other than Dynamics)
Really hate to be the bearer of bad news but here goes.
What are your FRx options if you don’t use one of the 4 Microsoft GLs? If you use Sage or Epicor or one of the other 40 or so GLs that FRx works with, your options are quite limited.
Your software publisher’s contract for FRx support ends December 2010. That is FRx’s End of Life. I don’t know yet if you can get per-incident phone support after this date, but it’d probably be smart NOT to count on it.
Microsoft is replacing FRx with Management Reporter (MR). Your MR options are even more limited than your FRx options. The only possibility is MR version 1, and that’s only if your GL publisher has already written an integration to it. You should contact the publisher (Sage, Epicor, etc) to find out what your options are. If they haven’t written an integration, then they may already have a non-Microsoft replacement product. I know several publishers are looking.
Future versions of Management Reporter won’t be available at all. Period.
Jan,
I’m confused since you seem to have written on March 10th that FRX 6.7 is “safe” (or at least as safe as these things get) for the forseeable future.
Did Microsoft make follow on announcements that changed the future of FRX (including 6.7?)
Thanks — great updates btw
Wayne Schulz
I updated the March 10th post with a correction from last Saturday, 3/14/09. The correction notes the same information above, that support ends Dec 2010. I was told definitively that FRx’s End of Life for non-Microsoft products is Dec 2010. But I am also looking for one more confirmation.
Jan,
The last line of your post states that “Future versions of Management Reporter won’t be available at all. Period.”
So basically, FRx is being retired at the end of this year, and MR is replacing it… however, no future release of MR will ever be available?
Sounds like a dead end.
Cheers,
Thano
For non-Microsoft GLs, FRx is retired at the end of *next* year. Dead end definitely. I have lots of non-Microsoft clients, so this isn’t good news for me either. Jan
Not saying this is official but we heard:
2010 End of new sales
2012 End of support / maintenance (as if there were any maintenance upgrades previously)
We use Management Reporter with the FDM (Financial Data Mart) data provider that comes with Management Reporter. This allowed us to integrate (by populating data from our GL into the FDM tables that MR knows how to access) our own GL package with MR. Are you saying that future releases of MR will take away the FDM data provider?
That is my understanding, Lynn. Unless your GL is one of Microsoft’s (NAV, AX, GP or SL). Going forward, MR is meant for those guys.