Microsoft Dynamics AX

Posted by spencer on February 24, 2010 under ERP Software | Be the First to Comment

Microsoft Dynamics AX (formerly Axapta) is one of the four ERP software products offered by Microsoft. (The others are Dynamics GP – formerly Great Plains, Dynamics SL – formerly Solomon, and Dynamics NAV – formerly Navision). Microsoft acquired Axapta in 2001 and has really focused a lot of development and marketing on this product. Of the 4 ERP products, AX is the best suited for larger organizations and is a very strong product. This makes it a good platform to move the product up market to compete against some of the larger competitors such as Oracle, and SAP. While the product is not currently at the level of the Oracle and SAP products (Microsoft marketing people may dispute this!), they are adding a tremendous amount of functionality to be able to compete in that space with this product.

We spoke with Guy Weismantel at the National Retail Federation tradeshow in January 2010. Guy is Director of Marketing for ERP software and he gave us a good background on the direction of AX product development. With all of Microsoft’s ERP products, the strategy has been to provide a good base ERP software package and let the Independent Software Vendors (ISV’s) develop industry specific solutions.  This strategy works well in the mid-market, but larger companies demand more integrated solutions. So in order to hit some key target vertical market industries, they have decided to focus on 5 industries, by buying ISV solutions to jump start the process of developing a solution for that industry. These industries are described in the video below and include: Government, Retail, Banking, Financial Services, and Non-Profit. Although Manufacturing was not included in this group, AX has manufacturing roots and is a strong product in that industry already.

Take a look at the video below to get a better understanding of the direction that Microsoft is taking Microsoft Dynamics AX.