OptimAL – performance still matters

Ok .. so .. I’ve been sitting on this one for a while..

A few months back, I got pulled into something Microsoft was cooking around “performance” .. and thanks to the usual NDA-stuff, I couldn’t say a word about it ..

Well .. it’s out now – as you might have noticed :

So .. let’s talk.

What is it?

OptimAL is a Microsoft-driven performance initiative for BC partners and ISVs. And no – it’s not a one-time “here’s your report, good luck”-kind of thing. It’s a structured program: baseline your maturity, skill up with sessions, dig into your telemetry (uhhum .. ), and then actually roll up your sleeves and get to work on your real code .. . Results. On YOUR code!

And here’s the hill I’ve been (happily) dying on for about 20 years now: most BC performance issues don’t come from the platform. They don’t come from the baseapp.

They come from our code. Yes .. you heard me ..

Outdated code .. and patterns, sloppy PTEs, POC-code that somehow ended up in production, “works on my machine”-stuff .. and then the customer goes and blames “Business Central is slow” .

OptimAL tries to tackle that .. at the source.

My part: the Escape Room

Duilio Tacconi and me delivered sessions together .. and yes – I got to do my thing: the Escape Room. And I must say – what a challenge it was to put together.. .

If you’ve been following along, you might remember I built an Escape Room framework before, for the BCTalent program – I blogged about that here: BCTalent – Escape Rooms. Well .. this is that same idea, but pointed straight at performance .

Here’s the fun part though. The Escape Room wasn’t some abstract puzzle I came up with out of thin air .. it’s basically a collection of the mistakes we see most often in real BC code. The repeated offenders. The anti-patterns that quietly make a page load slow .. or turn a batch job into an overnight affair.

So I took those, wrapped them in puzzles, and locked people in a room (well – virtually ) where the only way out .. is to fix them.

Did it actually work?

What .. the Escape Room? Sure!

The program! FOR SURE! Here are some quotes (I redacted the names of the partners – I wasn’t sure I was allowed to share them):

“We reduced a critical batch job run time from 5+ hours to under 20 min”

“We improved a page load time by 93%”

“We cut execution time by 76% in some of our App functionality”

“The pick creation process in our warehouse app is now 2.4x faster”

I’ll be honest – I was a bit baffled when I saw the outcome when partners were showcasing their improvements.

But even beyond the numbers .. the thing I liked most was the mindset-shift. Partners moving away from “fixing it when it hurts” .. towards just .. thinking about performance up front.

Oh – and telemetry got a much bigger place in pretty much all of them. #proud .

It’s a Microsoft thing ..

One thing I do want to be crystal clear about, because I’ve seen some confusion around it: this is 100% a Microsoft initiative. Not a Ciellos product with a Microsoft sticker slapped on it.

Microsoft only has so many PMs and engineers. They can spend that time building the platform .. or they can spend it on initiatives that lift the entire network. They can’t personally sit down with hundreds of partners and go through code line by line .. there simply aren’t enough hands.

And that’s exactly what a Dev Center is for: kind of like Microsoft’s extension to service the channel at scale .. without reaching over into the partner’s own customers. Ciellos is that Dev Center for OptimAL. They do the hands-on work .. but the initiative, and the “why” behind it, is Microsoft’s.

(Which, by the way, is also why MVPs like Duilio and me are in the mix .. )

Want in?

So .. if you want in:

• Start here: https://aka.ms/Optimal
• Application form: https://ciellos.com/microsoft-optimal-performance
• $12,900 USD .. which gets you the full assessment, the hands-on optimization, the sessions & workshops, the community, and the in-person workshop at MDCC in Copenhagen

Performance isn’t glamorous .. nobody puts “we made the batch job 15x faster” on LinkedIn. But it’s so often the difference between a customer that loves their system .. and one that quietly starts looking around for something else.

So .. take it seriously .

Original Post https://waldo.be/2026/05/28/optimal-performance-still-matters/