Microsoft has abandoned its plans to build a unified enterprise application suite.

The so-called Project Green aimed to create a single code base across all of Microsoft's existing enterprise suites, but the company has since tweaked the project's targets.

Microsoft laid the foundation for its enterprise products with the acquisition of Great Plains in 2000 and Navision in 2002.

The products are now marketed under the Microsoft Dynamics brand and the old suites have been rebranded as Microsoft Dynamics AX, GP, NAV and SL. Microsoft also added retail management and customer relationship management software.

Project Green was intended to merge the products into a single suite to be delivered in two 'waves'. The first would create a superset of the four original suites, and the second would move to a fully integrated application.

Microsoft is instead starting to share certain components between the applications, such as a common user interface and integration with Sharepoint server.

But Mogens Munkholm Elsberg, general manager for Microsoft NAV and AX, said that the vision of a common code has been abandoned, according to eWeek.

"We said two years ago that we would converge the product and that was the number one priority for Dynamics. We do not see that as a priority any more," he said.

"We think that over time we will add technology to the products that will be similar, like SharePoint integration, web services, the user interface. It does not make them one code base, but it does make them closer to one another."

A Microsoft spokesperson declined to address the future of Project Green when contacted by vnunet.com.

In an emailed comment, the spokesperson referred to a roadmap that Microsoft published in 2005 and stressed that the company plans to stick to those plans.

"As part of this road map, we are announcing major releases for all the product lines in 2008-2009 that share an increasing amount of common code, with support for the Wave 2 innovation themes," said the statement.

The Microsoft division responsible for the Dynamics products is the second smallest group within the company. Following years of losses, the group turned a profit of $24m on $919m revenue in fiscal 2006.