Directions EMEA 2024

- Responsible for building the next generation modern experiences for Dynamics 365 Business Central's integrations with Copilot, Power Platform and Microsoft 365 applications such as Microsoft Teams, Outlook, etc. - Frequent speaker at many global (Directions, BCTechDays...) conferences.

Cynthia is an accomplished technology professional who heads the business applications function catering to the needs of Small & Medium customers across more than 130 countries in Central, Southeast Europe and Middle East Africa. With more than 11 years of experience in the Cloud business, Cynthia has gained valuable expertise across various functions, including Sales, Marketing, and Business Strategy & Development. Her strong analytical skills and results-driven approach have contributed to her success in driving programs with cross-functional organizations and SMBs in the region.

Søren is an customer onboarding champion and a veteran in the industry, with 28 years of mapping business processes with user desire and technology under his belt ⭐⭐⭐ In the Business Central engineering team he drivers Copilot & Onboarding User Experiences and drives the investments in making it easier to for partners to onboard customers at scale. ⚙️✅ He has been around the block: - In IT departments primarily in manufacturing companies, developing ERP, internal consulting - Worked for various XAL/AX/NAV partners in as a systems integrator, developer and consultant - Run his own systems integration partner company for 7 years - And finally - when he couldn't resist the attraction of Microsoft any longer - joined in 2016 - He is passionate about Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging, and is a board member of Women in Dynamics ❤️💚💙💛 - In between all of this he enjoys playing in a hard-rock band as a semi-professional musician 🎵🤘🏼

Esteban is a Principal Software Engineer who has played a pivotal role in the Business Central service team since its inception. He has been instrumental in implementing the Business Central cloud platform and the core components of the Business Central control plane from its very conception. His expertise has been a constant asset in tackling complex challenges across various dimensions of the service, such as load balancing, optimizing scalability, and enhancing the service's reliability. Recently, his primary focus has been on building the Business Central AI agents runtime.

Levent is the SMB Sales Strategy Lead for Business Applications. Levent is responsible for defining the SMB segment sales strategy for Business Applications. Levent has been with Microsoft for 8 years and worked in different roles in Business Application group focusing on growing partner ecosystem.

Empowering every AL developer and BC organization on the planet to achieve more

I'm Elaiza 👋, a Senior Cloud Advocate for Power Platform at Microsoft. I have a ✨passion✨ for helping the technical community build solutions with Microsoft Power Platform. I started with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and then fell in love with Power Platform in 2018. I often speak at online virtual events or in-person events. I also have a series on my YouTube channel called WTF - What The Flow where I help others learn about cloud flows.

Software Engineer 2 at Microsoft working on the Server Runtime team to ensure that the Business Central backend is performant and reliable. Specializing in Web Services, Reporting, and Telemetry.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/philippeblondet/

Josephine is a part of the Partner and Customer Growth team within the Microsoft Business Central Engineering team. She manages the Concierge Partner Program lead by Fredrik Hietala, where she works closely with partners to accelerate growth and streamline success in Business Central acquisitions, implementations and migrations. At Directions EMEA, Josephine will share insights on optimizing partner success through the Microsoft Programs and leveraging community resources.

Jonas run the Engineering Systems teams for Dynamics 365 Business Central and has been working on build, test and CI/CD systems for the past 20 years.

During his 19 years at Microsoft, Mike has experienced the life of Test Engineer, Engineering Manager and Product Manager, shipping Visual Studio, AX, NAV and Business Central. Today, he's responsible for leading Business Central into the AI era and our 'Better together' story with Teams, Outlook, Excel and OneDrive.

Peter has been with Microsoft since the acquisition of Navision in 2002, and has worked as a program manager in a number of areas and product lines throughout this time. He is currently a program manager on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central developer tools team, responsible for the AL language, Visual Studio Code tooling, developer and test tools for Copilot in Business Central, AppSource integration and extensions.

I am Alice Bottaro, a Partner Solution Sales at Microsoft, specialized in Business Applications. With a robust background as a Project Manager and Solution Architect at both Microsoft Partners and various companies, I have honed my expertise in this field. Passionate about technology and process management, I have also acted as a Partner Technology Strategist, helping Microsoft partners enhance and solidify their technological competencies.

With 20 years experience in the IT industry, I am currently driving business growth and customer success through strategic partnerships, collaborating with partners to develop and execute sales strategies, identify new business opportunities, and enhance customer engagement with Microsoft Business Applications.

Christina Buhelt works in the release, compliance and privacy management team. Her work is mostly behind the scene, making sure that Business Central runs on trust. With more than a decade in this field, she is passionate about enabling other's potential.

Program Manager for the Dynamics 365 Business Central Control Plane team at Microsoft.

Enrico Cimitan joined the Microsoft family in 2017 as a software engineer. He initially worked in the Dynamics 365 Business Central application team, and later shifted to features in the client area. Since 2019, Enrico has been contributing to the data connectors and integrations between Business Central and other Microsoft products, including Power BI, Power Automate, Power Apps, and Dataverse.

Jason is a product manager at Microsoft who has been focusing on Field Service and frontline worker use-cases for nearly a decade. He has a special interest in data integration and connecting systems together to maximize the value of all the connected systems.

Jacqui is a Senior Partner Marketing Advisor at Microsoft for Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Europe. She has over 20 years of experience in B2B GTM, with extensive cross-industry marketing experience working as the Consulting Africa CMO at Deloitte and senior GTM positions at Microsoft EMEA. She is passionate about the empowerment of women, and the digital transformation of emerging markets as a way to become internationally relevant and globally competitive. With an unwavering growth mindset, she constantly pursues opportunities for personal development & growth. She is an Advisory Board Member on the CMO Council for Africa and a Board Member of the Global Alliance for ICT and Development (GAID), a UN approved non-profit organization that aims to broaden dialogue among governments, businesses, academia, and civil society on innovative ways of utilizing ICT to advance development.

Responsible for leading the Microsoft Business Applications EMEA regional partner 'go to market' team. Driving solution area marketing strategy, planning and execution through partners to maximise cloud revenue, consumption impact and joint business growth. An IAMCP Board Member with a passion for enabling partner community engagement, driving D&I initiatives and supporting those who are early in their careers.

Craig Crescas, based in Colorado, began his Microsoft career in March 2000. He joined the organization when Microsoft began investing in Business Applications (ERP and CRM). With almost 25 years of experience in Dynamics, Craig is chartered with changing the world one partner at a time. Since the launch of Dynamics 365, Craig has dedicated his efforts to recruiting and onboarding organizations, those interested in adding business applications to their product portfolio, by providing leadership, guidance and onboarding tools to streamline our partner’s time to market.

I am a Senior Cloud Solution Architect for Business Applications at Microsoft. I’ve been working in various roles in the Microsoft Dynamics ERP world, ranging from consulting and solution architecture, presales, product management and customer success. I want to be on the cutting edge of technology, and strive for solving real world IT problems with the best software.

Christian Heide Damm is the cloud architect of Business Central and is responsible for the overall design of the Business Central Online architecture. Christian has been part of the entire NAV/BC journey to the cloud and continues to be passionate about all things SaaS and cloud architecture.

I hold a master’s degree in applied mathematics and began my career in 2006, working with various versions of Navision, Dynamics NAV, and Business Central. Since joining Microsoft in 2016 as a software engineer, I have been deeply involved in the development and enhancement of Business Central. In 2022, I transitioned to the Business Central team based in Lyngby, Denmark. My primary areas of focus are inventory, costing, warehouse management, manufacturing, and planning.

They're a senior software engineer in the Developer Tools team. Specialized in the internals of the AL language and runtime, performance optimizations and data insights. They're also the person with the crab avatar answering your AL questions on GitHub.

Responsible for leading the Microsoft Biz Apps partner 'go to market' for Germany and France in the SMB segment. Driving marketing and go-to-market strategy incl. programs and investments, planning and execution through partners to maximise cloud revenue and joint business growth.

Working on the core server behind Business Central as part of the Server-Runtime team.

Hey there! I'm Edmondo Ferretti, and I've been living in Dublin, Ireland while working at Microsoft for the past nine years. I kicked off my journey as a Site Reliability Engineer, where I spent two years making sure everything ran smoothly and reliably. For the last seven years, I've been part of the Business Central Control Plane team, diving deep into security. It's been an exciting ride, and I've loved every moment of it. My passion for security and my dedication to the team have helped us step up our game. I'm proud to be part of Microsoft and to contribute to making our systems and customers safer and more secure.

Growing the SMB segment for Dynamics 365, Business Applications and PowerApps territory

Computer scientist at Microsoft. Software Engineer on the platform team of Business Central.

Tomas Grubliauskas is a Principal Software Engineering Manager in Business Central Client team. Tomas has 10 years of experience building client experiences in ERP and SMB field. Currently, Tomas is leading Business Central modern client efforts for web and mobile. Tomas is the go-to person for questions about UI, Accessibility, PWA, JS add-ins, Android/IOS apps and browser client.

Developer on the Business Central backend since 2016

Thorsten has been working at Microsoft in Germany for almost 17 years. During this time, he has filled various roles. Currently and for about 6 years he is PDM for the Dynamics partners in Germany.

Computer scientist at Microsoft. Software Engineer on the application team of Business Central.

Product manager with Microsoft for 6 years currently working on Data Reconciliation, Collections and Data Integrations in Copilot for Finance. Prior Microsoft experience includes 5 years working on Project Operations and Project for the Web, focused on resource management and project planning. 20 years of experience in product, program and project management across enterprise software, professional services and construction management.

TBD

Senior Software Engineer working in application group for Dynamics 365 Business Central.

20+ years experience working with NAV and Business Central from the partner channel, Microsoft as well as with large customers. 9+ years with Microsoft working in different roles all with Business Central as main focus area.

Software Engineer working in the application group for Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Principal product manager focusing on partner capacity ISV Success

Bardur works on architectural issues in various application areas, often with focus on performance.

Ivan has been with Microsoft for many years with product since 2001, holding finance consulting and product manager roles within the localization team and then in core Application and Integration teams. For last couple of years, he focused on helping making Business more intuitive, deliver on application product feedback and working on integration between Business Central and Dataverse, Dynamics 365 for Sales and Field Service.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ievgeniikorovin/

Blazej Kotelko is one of the PMs in the Microsoft Development Center Copenhagen, Denmark but he had worked previously for Microsoft in London, UK and in Poland. With experience in the SMB space, UX design, low-code platforms and partner management he is currently responsible for the success and roadmap of Dynamics 365 Business Central integration with Power Platform.

Software Engineer for the Dynamics 365 Business Central Control Plane team at Microsoft.

Freddy is responsible for everything around Docker, the BcContainerHelper PowerShell module and our plug-and-play DevOps solution AL-Go for GitHub, which can help partners and customers to run their DevOps processes without the need of a DevOps engineer. All these offerings are open source and Freddy uses among other things his blog (https://freddysblog.com) to evangelize these areas to the community. Freddy is also one of the leads for the Business Central MVP group and is trying to make sure that our Most Valuable Professionals gets the information, love and attention they need to assist and make sure we have a good and vibrant community around Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Esben Nyhuus Kristoffersen is a principal architect on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central team. He has been working on the modern development story since the beginning and wrote the first lines of what would eventually become the new AL compiler. Prior to joining Microsoft, Esben had his own software company, developing project/time management software for Time/system International and later, a combined POS and online reservation system for bowling centers. With over 20 years of experience in software development, Esben has worked on various projects including Microsoft Business Framework (MBF) and Fenway. He later moved to the Microsoft Dynamics NAV team in 2006. Esben is an expert in his field and has been invited to speak at several conferences around the world.

EMEA Partner GTM Lead – Business Applications Emilio López Fernández is the Senior Partner Marketing Manager at Microsoft, based in Madrid. Emilio excels in driving solution area marketing strategic, planning and execution through partners and fostering strong partnerships. With a focus on innovation and technology, Emilio has led projects that significantly enhanced customer engagement to maximize cloud revenue, consumption impact and joint business growth. He collaborates closely with top industry professionals and actively promotes well-being and inclusivity within the workplace. Emilio's expertise spans digital & account based marketing and partner relationship management

Jens has been with Microsoft for more than 20 years and has worked on the Business Central product (and previously Dynamics NAV) for most of this time. He is currently leading the Server Runtime team, so his everyday responsibility is to ensure that the BC backend is always stable and performant.

Predrag Maricic is a Software Engineering Manager on the Microsoft Business Central team. He joined Microsoft in 2011, after working for 9 years within the area of financial and ERP software. In Microsoft, he was covering wide range of responsibilities - delivering global features, transforming application test strategy, implementing extension strategy, making the product ready for SaaS and developing artificial intelligence features. Lately, he has been involved in shaping up localization strategy and delivering Business Central worldwide.

As the SMB Channel Sales Lead of Tech for Social Impact at Microsoft Germany, Netherlands and Western Europe, Shalona Moodley brings together 15 years of experience spanning commercial and social businesses. She utilizes this experience to enable Microsoft Partners to empower nonprofits to fight inequality, eliminate poverty, protect the planet, and drive massive impact while driving business growth.

With over two decades of driving innovation and growth with our Microsoft Business Application customers and partners, leveraging technology to transform and empower businesses, consistently pioneering strategies that harness cloud technology and digital services. Rebecca has become a trusted advisor to executive and management teams. Armed with an understanding of the intricate interplay between technology and business strategy, they've consistently delivered transformative results that serve as cornerstones for future growth.

With 24 years at Microsoft Peter has had many different roles. Since 2016 he has been helping Biz apps partners transform and grow with cloud solutions.

Vincent has been working with Business Central for over fifteen years. He and his team are responsible for the architecture of Business Central. During the last years, he has been focusing on AI and innovation.

Brian Nielsen is a Principal Program Manager in the Dynamics 365 Business Central team, specializing in financial management. With extensive experience across various application areas, Brian has a deep passion for Business Central's finance features and capabilities. Currently, the focus is on enhancing the finance area with the new subscription billing module, Power BI apps, and financial reporting. Additionally, Brian is dedicated to promoting the adoption of recent features such as allocation accounts, statistical accounts, and G/L account revaluation, while continuously improving multi-entity functionalities for intercompany, consolidation, and MDM.

Support french partners on business applications for SMB market.

Erida is a Software Engineer II at Microsoft and has been part of the Dynamics 365 Business Central team for 5 years. Her expertise areas include the browser client, the mobile app, Tenant Admin Center, accessibility, agent UX, etc.

Kennie Nybo Pontoppidan works as program manager in the Dynamics 365 Business Central server backend team. He has been working in the dangerous field between customers, partners, support professionals, developers and dba's for many years and done his part of mistakes as a developer before that in his 18+ years in the it industry. He enjoys working with data and databases and really, really enjoys working using KQL. Kennie has no humor.

Magnus Olsson is a Senior Partner Marketing Manager at Microsoft, known for driving strategic marketing initiatives and fostering strong partnerships. With a passion for technology and innovation, he has led projects that significantly enhanced customer engagement and business growth. He collaborates closely with top industry professionals and actively promotes well-being and inclusivity within the workplace. Magnus's expertise spans digital marketing, CRM, and mobile application development. Magnus shares his insights and experiences at industry events, captivating audiences with engaging, energetic presentations.

Andrei Panko is a Product Manager on the Business Central engineering team at Microsoft Development Center Copenhagen. He started working with Business Central (back then it was Dynamics NAV) as a consultant, developer, and project manager back in 2004, and was an MVP for six consecutive years. Andrei has extensive field experience in the supply chain, and has engaged in many other aspects of the Business Central application and platform as well. His focus is on building solutions with rich business functionality and low implementation cost.

Adriano Perolini is a Senior Partner Solution Sales Manager at Microsoft, based in Zurich. With extensive experience in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, Adriano has been instrumental in driving digital transformation for partners and customers. He has a proven track record of leading successful engagements and delivering innovative solutions. Adriano is known for his strategic thinking, technical expertise, and ability to foster strong relationships with stakeholders. He frequently speaks at industry events, sharing insights on cloud technologies and business applications. Adriano's passion for technology and commitment to excellence make him a valuable asset to any organisation.

Marta Pons González is a dynamic professional with a passion for digital transformation and customer experience. With a robust background in cloud business solutions and a focus on SMB BizApps channel for Spain at Microsoft, Marta has been instrumental in driving productivity and customer knowledge through technology.

As SMB Business Applications Business Lead for Microsoft in the UK, I am responsible for the UK revenue number for all of our Dynamics 365 Portfolio. Helping customers succeed is my main driver & I will work to help with the partners in the ecosystem.

As Partner Solution Sales for Business Applications in SMB, I curate and connect an ecosystem of Dynamics 365 partners with our customers, who are looking for a new ERP and/or CRM solution. Together with Partners I grow the Dynamics 365 business, positioning the unique Microsoft platform that unifies processes and data (Dynamics 365 + Office 365 + LinkedIn + AI and machine learning) providing our customers the tools that help them make smarter decisions and take fact based actions that drive their business.

Channel Manager, Business Applications, Microsoft

Angela Reese Kawano is a Senior Partner Marketing Manager in the Business Applications & Global Industry Team . Angela is responsible for strategy, practice building and capacity of our Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) partner segment, with the intent of growing the Business Application portfolio across small and medium business customers.

Blanca is a Software Engineer at Microsoft on the Developer Tools team of Dynamics 365 Business Central. She focusses on the continuous improvement of the development experience within Visual Studio Code to empower developers to code, explore, and troubleshoot their AL code with greater ease and efficiency.

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Full time power platform enthusiast @EnBW & YouTuber

I am a Senior Engineer at Microsoft, where I have spent the past 7 years working on product infrastructure, build systems, deployments, upgrades, and, most importantly, security. As the Security Champion for the Engineering Systems team, I consistently drive innovation and ensure robust security practices in both my team and the organization.

Roman Sauber has been building business software since 2007. Passionate about the intersection of people, technology, and business, he joined Microsoft in 2015 and the Business Central team in 2018. He is now serving as engineering manager for the Control Plane team helping to build a world class cloud platform for Business Central. Responsible for running highly available services around the world, his focus areas include tenant management, administration, app management, updates, deployments, security, and DevOps tooling.

Architect on the Business Central team, specializing in partner collaboration. Leading the co-development initiative on GitHub to fast-track business application development. Serving as the ambassador for the Business Central ecosystem, representing partners in the product group. Dedicated to nurturing the product group's MVPs.

Started as a phone system software developer, switched to Windows applications development and ended up as a distributed systems developer with experience working in several projects at Microsoft, like Dynamics Marketing, Dataverse, Finance and Operations, and now Business Central.

Anastasia is leading the Biz Apps SMB territory in Finland and collaborating with the local partners, with a large focus on Business Central

Aleksandar is the Product Manager for Dynamics 365 Business Central, responsible for delivering regulatory features and the executing geo-expansion strategies, but also owner of E-Documents and Sustainability modules. His extensive IT background spans 40 years, with a focus on ERP solutions before his current role at Microsoft. A former Dynamics NAV MVP, Aleksandar is also recognized for his expertise as a lecturer at international conferences.

Remco is an experienced sales leader with over 8 years experience at Microsoft and more than 12 years in the Microsoft ecosystem. He started his career within Microsoft licensing. For the last few years he has been working as a Channel Sales Manager focusing on Co-selling within the Microsoft Dynamics partner ecosystem and positioning all of the Microsoft programs to support the partners in their customer journey. Remco is very passionate about the D365 and Power Platform partners and how this ecosystem is capable of driving and implementing groundbreaking solutions to the Small and Medium Sized Business at scale.

Responsible for leading the Global SMB channel capacity and capability strategy as well as creating growth programs to develop our ecosystem and grow Business Applications SMB penetration. Work closely with our WW Microsoft field extended team for execution.

I've started my career as a junior software engineer in a hardware company, then switched to Microsoft Gold Partner and finally ended up in Microsoft Business Applications. It gave me a broad experience of software development from all angles. At this moment in Microsoft, I'm a member of the Finance team responsible for delivering new W1 and local features for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Thousands of companies and users all over the world use these features.

Astrid is the Business Lead for Business Applications in Western Europe at Microsoft, where she is driving growth in the SMB market with her sales team across ten European countries. As the co-founder of #thenewITgirls, she empowers women in IT, showcasing the benefits of a diverse workforce and inspiring others to pursue a career in IT. Her commitment to diversity and inclusion, along with her passion for creating positive change, defines her leadership.

Sandy is a Product Management leader with extensive experience in the US, Europe, and Asia, combining commercial/technical responsibilities in principal/senior roles at various TMT (Technology, Media, and Telecommunications) companies, such as Microsoft/Skype/Nokia, BSkyB (British Sky Broadcasting), and C&W (Cable & Wireless). At Microsoft, he's currently driving the efforts to optimize resource governance/server management for Dynamics 365 Business Central as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Software as a Service (SaaS) that targets Small & Medium -sized Businesses (SMBs) and accelerate its integrations with Microsoft Dataverse/Power Platform.

Jacob leads the team that designs and researches the Dynamics 365 Business Central user experience.

Lead Dynamics SPA and DPL (on-prem) commercial programs including policies, pricing, and offerings.

Software engineer at Microsoft, working on the engineering systems team for Dynamics 365 Business Central. Passionate about working on GitHub and AL-Go.