**What is Project Madeira?**
Microsoft have taken the same technology and **most of the logic from Dynamics NAV and used it to create a 'NAV Lite' that is only available as an online subscription option via a web browser**.
It's had considerable effort applied to the core NAV logic to make it simpler to use in a way that the small business role centre or the C5 replacement did not manage.
**Why not call it 'NAV Lite'?**
Microsoft Dynamics has a large GP partner community in the US that will ignore it if they see it as a derivative of the NAV product they have been turning down for years. With the writing on the wall for GP (lots of the former GP development team in Fargo are now working on NAV and Project Madeira) Microsoft needs to get those partners to buy into another product before they defect to Netsuite. Giving a different name avoids preconceived perceptions.
**Why is it US only?**
See the answer above, GP is largely a US product (with a smaller user base in the UK) so that primarily where the problem is. However, if it's not in the UK and other what Microsoft calls tier one markets by the end of the year than it will indicate a set of quality problems that I don't expect.
**Why all the coverage/fuss**
Well they did a really good job of making it a surprise. I'm both an MVP and a member of something called the managed service council, both of which are supposed to give us the inside track and still didn't get a hint that it was this 'finished'. It does explain why I didn't get a reply to all those emails asking what happened to the interim release promised at Directions though guys J
Surprise always gets attention; this may not be on the level of a new Apple category device but similarly by positioning it as completely new it's getting coverage that it would as just a variant of Dynamics NAV.
**Who is it for?**
While they are saying its targeted at the 10 to 99 user segment **I believe that its natural home is the 5 to 20 user segment that in the UK has traditionally been the home of Pegasus Opera and Sage Line 100/200**.
- See more at: http://www.dynamicsbusiness.co.uk/2016/04/project-madeira-questions-hopefully-right-answers.html#sthash.k9434DhF.dpuf