Dynamics AX and Azure put the spotlight on partner innovation

It’s always really satisfying to be able to share news and that’s why I’m particularly excited to reveal that today we’re ushering in a new world for ERP with the release of our flagship Dynamics AX for Australian customers and partners.

The enterprise class ERP business application, completely architected on and for Microsoft Azure, brings the power, speed and intelligence of cloud computing to people and organisations. We believe Dynamics AX is a transformative release, with a completely reworked user experience that’s earning great reviews from early users and which represents a significant departure over legacy ERP systems, making it easier and more enjoyable and productive to use.

When combined with the speed and power of Azure, Dynamics AX, together with Azure SQL and PowerBI, delivers near real time analytics, embedded pervasively across the application. We’re really excited about what we believe is a breakthrough in near real time business intelligence based on the in-memory capabilities of Azure SQL as well as the beautiful visualization of Power BI.

For Partners, the release continues the good story that is the Microsoft Dynamics business. Over the past year or so we have continued on a strong innovation path with Dynamics, delivering a steady stream of updates to enable businesses around the world and Australia to run intelligent operations and deliver world class customer experiences to achieve business transformation. The results speak for themselves as we have seen strong growth resulting in the Dynamics business now approaching the $2 billion worldwide milestone.

Today I’m also pleased to be able to share the news that new CSP partners UXE Eclipse, Oakton and Sable37 are getting right behind the new opportunities being offered by the release of Dynamics AX.

Bradley Stroop, Chief Executive Officer, UXC Eclipse, described the new platform as a “game-changer” for anyone who wanted to create their own business solutions which can be customised for specific customer requirements.

“The new Dynamics AX gives the perfect platform for the sort of innovation that Azure and PowerBI are made for, and the sort of innovation that our customers are crying out for. UXC Eclipse has invested to ensure industry-specific products are ready on the Azure store with our Exceed solutions; delivering merchandising in Retail and an Analytics solution that harnesses PowerBI,” he said.

His thoughts were echoed by Bob Peebles, Executive General Manager, Partners, Oakton: “We have already developed and have in play new income streams for our business as it gives us much greater reach for our IP. Oakton’s Dynamics AX-as-a-Service offering within the CSP program, coupled with a set of industry specific accelerators, further adds to our portfolio of Applications as a consumptive service market offering that help organisations work smarter, faster, and with greater confidence”

Martin Wildsmith, Director from Sable37 said: “As partners move towards Industry Based Solutions the CSP Platform and the latest release of Dynamics AX is an ideal platform.

We have many prospects in Retail and Home Building that want a turnkey end to end solution in the cloud. Our customers are looking for solutions that are faster to implement, have deeper IP for their industry that where can leverage quickly, and they want this all to work as one solution including AX, CRM, Office365 and reporting.”

“The CSP platform allows Sable to take the industry IP we have built up over the last 10 years and deliver it as a template solution fully hosted and integrated with all of the other components,” he said.

As I said, we think this is a transformative ERP application and that’s an assessment that respected international research firm Enterprise Applications Consulting also came to when we asked them to review the latest release of Dynamics AX.

The combination of Dynamics AX, LCS and Azure will deliver a number of benefits. The business modeling component of LCS allows Partners to effectively “bundle” unique IP, processes, and methods into a repeatable service that is staged in Azure and managed by LCS; and sold via LCS – Dynamics is leveraging the Azure Marketplace to allow partners to sell LCS-based methods and services that can be developed and deployed in the cloud. This should help partners commercialise their IP and make it available much more broadly than if they sold it exclusively on their own commerce sites.

The full report can be downloaded here but the important consideration for Partners in today’s announcement of the release of Dynamics AX is the new opportunity it offers for the development of new business models and new income streams.

Today’s announcement is an important one – for your customers’ businesses, most importantly, but also for your own business.