In the early days, Binary Stream was a small team focused on solving big problems. The work was hands-on, fast-paced, and constantly evolving.
In 1999, while the tech world was racing toward the millennium and riding the waves of the dot-com boom, Binary Stream was just getting started.
At the time, there wasn’t a grand vision or a carefully mapped-out five-year plan. What there was, was curiosity. A drive to build something meaningful. And a belief that business software could be better: more intuitive, more integrated, and more supportive of the people using it every day.
The platform that sparked it all? Great Plains.
For those who’ve been in the ERP space long enough to remember, Great Plains was a rising star in the small-to-midsize business market. It had something different—an ecosystem built around partnerships, where ISVs and resellers were central to success. That channel-first approach was magnetic. It offered both opportunity and community, and it quickly became clear that this was where Binary Stream belonged.
In the early days, Binary Stream was a small team focused on solving big problems. The work was hands-on, fast-paced, and constantly evolving. Every customer request was a learning experience. Every implementation revealed a new workflow to streamline, a gap to fill, a better way to do things.
At first, much of the work was custom development. But over time, patterns started to emerge: recurring needs, similar frustrations, and repeated builds. That’s when the shift began: from custom projects to scalable solutions. From ad hoc to product.
That shift laid the foundation for Binary Stream’s future as a Microsoft ISV.
In 2001, Microsoft announced it would acquire Great Plains. A year later, the deal closed, and the ecosystem Binary Stream had embraced became part of the Microsoft family.
For many companies, a change like that might have triggered hesitation. For Binary Stream, it sparked momentum.
Microsoft’s entry brought more structure, more investment, and a bigger vision for ERP. It also meant higher standards. To succeed in this new landscape, we had to double down: on quality, on innovation, and on building solutions that would stand the test of time on the Microsoft stack.
We leaned in.
Our products evolved. Our team grew. We invested in our partnerships and found new ways to deliver value through the Microsoft Dynamics ecosystem. From Multi-Entity Management to Subscription Billing, our focus remained the same: simplifying complex business processes so customers could spend less time in the weeds and more time driving impact.
Over time, a realization started to set in: we were solving the same problems again and again, just for different clients.
One company needed a better way to manage multiple legal entities in Dynamics. Another wanted to automate recurring billing. A third struggled with manual processes for lease administration. We kept rebuilding similar functionality, reinventing the wheel each time.
We were seeing patterns. And those patterns held the key to something bigger than custom code. Instead of continuing to solve the same problems in isolation, what if we could build standardized, repeatable, high-quality solutions that any company could use?
Once we embraced product development, everything changed. Our processes became more structured. Our roadmap more focused. We moved from short-term project cycles to longer-term product planning, with versioning, documentation, support, and enablement built in.
This shift also reshaped our relationships; with customers, Microsoft, and our partner community.
Rather than being a vendor that delivered a solution and moved on, we became a long-term partner. Someone who understood the Microsoft ecosystem, anticipated roadmap changes, and built solutions that fit right into the platform: fully integrated, seamless, and ready to grow with the business.
Looking back, that decision to pivot away from custom work may be one of the most important in Binary Stream’s history. It laid the foundation for everything that followed, from our flagship billing and lease solutions, to our inclusion in Microsoft’s licensing portfolio.
It also helped us grow as a company, not just in size, but in purpose. It allowed us to focus on what we do best: simplifying financial operations so businesses can scale with confidence.
