Google Trends is a helpful tool to find out, how many people are interested in a certain version of dynamics nav (former navision). So i played a bit with that tool.

This chart shows the google trend for the search terms nav 2009, nav 2013, nav 2013 r2 and nav 2015 for the date range 01/2008 – 11/2014. Nice to see the peaks of nav 2009 and nav 2013 logically near the release dates. Also you can see that nav 2009 has a stable value since about 2012. for nav 2013 r2 there is no peak, but it seems there will be one for nav 2015.

A more detailed view showing date range 06/2012-11/2014.

And only year 2014. you can see a stable downswing for nav 2013, a stable trend line for nav 2009 (conservative clients: are currently satisfied with nav 2009 (sp1 or r2), but maybe interested in an upgrade to nav 2015). also it seems that nav 2013 r2 has no great future, but be aware, that search results for nav 2013 also contain results for nav 2013 r2 and vice versa. so it’s hard to say, which of the results only point to nav 2013 or only to nav 2013 r2. otherwise there is a good chance for nav 2015.

A question: What are the reasons for many companies to stay with older software like nav 2009 or nav 5? Money, Useability, Performance, Fear about Upgrading (especially because of a hugh amount of customizations – in many cases).
What about Usability? Till Nav 2009 the main GUI tool were the windows forms. Ugly gray and white, but quick and easy to use. What about the newer technology, the pages? Yeah, this is WPF technology. WPF is a .Net GUI Framework with many, many features. You have ribbons (toolbars) with BIG, nice looking buttons. The sizing and placing of the controls (mainly textboxes) is done automatically, when resizing the page. No change done by developers is needed for that feature. You have fast tabs and factboxes. The pages can be customized by the user. You get a menu bar at the left side of the so called role center (the start page). But, WPF is slow, really slow. So the nav windows client (RTC), which displays the pages, is also slow. So many users, who know and like the old (windows) forms and their speed, trying the newer rtc client, are terrified about the rtc client. People, for whom nav is new, there is no big problem. But in many cases, sooner or later, many of the nav clients do the upgrade, nevertheless.

A little word about older nav versions. There are many implementations of Nav 5.0, Nav 4.0 and Nav 3.7. Unfortunately there are not enough search results to get a google trend chart. But for sure all of them are clients, which want an upgrade in the future, some day …

if you are interested to use google trends for yourself, here is the link:
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en-US #q=nav%202009%2C%20nav%202013%2C%20nav%202013%20r2%2C%20nav%202015 &date=1%2F2008%2083m &cmpt=q

and the link to embed in your page/blog:
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”//www.google.com/trends/embed.js?hl=en-US &tz &q=nav+2009,+nav+2013,+nav+2013+r2,+nav+2015 &date=1/2008+83m &cmpt=q &content=1 &cid=TIMESERIES_GRAPH_0 &export=5 &w=500 &h=330″></script>

This my first posting in my nav blog.

Cheers & regards
Jonathan Archer