Microsoft's ambitious next-generation business applications are now due out in the "Longhorn" time frame, according to a top Microsoft executive.

The upcoming product line, dubbed Project Green, will be built on what Microsoft Senior Vice President Doug Burgum calls a new "global" code base.

Atop that foundation will come functionality now found in Microsoft Business Solutions' Great Plains, Navision, and Solomon business applications, the company has said. (See "Microsoft readies 'Green,' unified code base for business apps".)

"Green is now due in the Longhorn timeframe and will stand on the shoulders of R&D around innovation on the platform, database, Office, communications and security...then we come in and add our piece which is innovation around visually connecting transactions, customers, employees and partners," said Burgum who heads Microsoft Business Solutions or MBS.

Longhorn, the next major release of Windows, is now expected in 2005 or 2006. Sources briefed on Green earlier this year expected major parts of it to surface in the fourth quarter of 2004, although they thought Microsoft was optimistic in that projection.

Green is to be "the brand new product line that replaces all of the above Great Plains/Navision/Solomon accounting, finance and ERP applications," said one source close to Microsoft at that time.

Project Green will also build atop the emerging Microsoft Business Framework (MBF) (see "Microsoft Touts Framework"), that had been based within MBS in Fargo, N.D., but moved early this summer over to Microsoft's development group in Redmond, Wash. under Eric Rudder, senior vice president of servers and tools. Darren Laybourn, who had led the Great Plains Dexterity development project, also moved from Fargo, where Great Plains resided, to Microsoft's Redmond headquarters.

"There are 300 developers working on MBF, and that next-gen tool strategy will move into the development division and the framework will be made broadly available to all ISVs as part of the broad Microsoft platform," Burgum said.

Burgum and his MBS colleagues have been reticent about talking too much about Green for fear of spooking current customers and partners. MBS will continue to sell and support the current-generation products for years, he noted in an interview Wednesday.

The reason is simple: Unlike the operating systems market where the big revenue comes early in the product life cycle, business applications get more profitable as they mature. "We have large installed bases of happy customers who continue to buy add-on modules," Burgum said.

As for Project Green development, MBS is taking advantage of its diverse roots. The division grew out of Microsoft's acquisitions of Great Plains (which had already acquired Solomon Software) and Navision. Development as a result is split among three sites, Copenhagen (where Navision was based), Fargo, and Redmond, Burgum said. There is some work still being done as well in Finlay, Ohio, home of Solomon.

"We've rationalized the locations. There are some challenges to distributed development and also some benefits utilizing all the technology we can offer to customers. We're an any-time, any-place kind of company," he noted.

Burgum reiterated that one of Microsoft's goals, is to build infrastructure not only to its own applications but third-party offerings as well. "I'd like to think in ten years that all of this middleware, tool stuff, our estimate is that 30 to 40 percent of people's budgets is spent on plumbing that the customer never sees and creates no differentiation. We want to address all that duplication of effort and cost," he noted.

Last month, Microsoft said several European ISVs had pledged to adopt MBF. They included Adonix, AP Automation & Productivity, Bedin Shop Systems, Cegid, CODA, and Scala Business Solutions.

Microsoft executives including Burgum will talk more about the future of Microsoft product and channel plans next week at the Microsoft Momentum partner conference in New Orleans