Microsoft's Project Madeira exist within Microsoft Outlook, allowing for users to access them without the hassle of opening another application.
The Project Madeira is a business app that works with Windows, iOS, and Android. It exists within Outlook. Thus, picture it like this: Outlook app for iOS and Android with a calendar; however, that calendar portion is not a separate application.
According to PC World, "Microsoft defines Project Madeira as a public cloud service (or software as a service) for Windows, iOS or Android devices, running on top of Microsoft Azure. It just happens to run within Outlook."
The services offered by Madeira are for small businesses with employees between 10 to 100 employees. The Madeira will include features that can be used for dimensions, financials, inventory, sales and purchase management, multi-currency, CRM, and business insight.
At present, the Project Madeira exists as a "public preview." Microsoft said that the service will, however, become available first in the U.S. during the second half of 2016.
The Microsoft Office has become a platform equipped with business-intelligence tools integrated in the software. For instance, there is already the Microsoft PowerBI running on top of Microsoft Excel and Microsoft's Delve and Outlook Groups with Outlook. Now, here comes Madeira, which is armed with set of tools running on top of Outlook, purposely built to accomplish the task at hand.
Project Madeira is defined as "new multi-tenant, public cloud business management service (SaaS). It is a separate release from Microsoft Dynamics NAV, which is on track to ship v.next in the second half of CY 2016."
It is interesting to note, however, that Madeira does have its roots in Dynamics NAV. Dynamics NAV Most Valuable Professional Erik Hougaard said, "NAV has always be able to detach business logic from technology and this has enabled Microsoft to move the NAV application into the cloud, the result Madeira. This is not quite NAV, but a version of NAV tailored to a 'cloud first, mobile first' world."
