The next SL release requirements are being developed by Plumbline, which also provides product support and the help desk. Additional staff was contracted to Plumbline and the internal development team at Microsoft was sent on to other areas, reportedly to work on AX. “I believe this is a better set-up for now all development is under one roof and driven by one team,” says one channel observer. This was apparently put in place in August, but was not officially announced and news is just starting to seep out into the rumor mill. The official description from a spokesperson was as follows: “We are expanding our relationship with Plumbline Solutions, a proven Microsoft development partner, in the development of Microsoft Dynamics SL. Plumbline has worked closely with Microsoft for the past seven years to successfully develop and add value to Microsoft Dynamics SL. Expanding the relationship was a natural next step to help increase our engineering efficiencies.” Despite all the nice words, it still seems like Microsoft freed up resources to work on something else.