Dynamics Ax and the cloud - Part 2

In the last blog post we talked about Dynamics Ax and the cloud.  And the fact that Microsoft's latest release of Dynamics Ax, Ax 2012, is not the cloud version (some hoped for).  Is it a sign?  Should we be unhappy about that?

Microsoft already has some cloud solutions up and running, focussed on business users.  With Office 365, CRM 2011 for example.   With  varying degrees of success, on all levels.
Take availibility for example: Customers of Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS), with hosted Exchange and Sharepoint solutions, had to work without mail for a few days after a MS upgrade mid 2011.  In August 2011, it was MS CRM 2011 and Office 365 which suffered from outages. And again.
Every IT department has to deal with downtime one time or another.  But when an IT department serves thousands of customers with an online solution, it's high profile, big news.  And Microsoft can hopefully learn from these experiences and improve them, for an Ax cloud release later.

Another level where Microsoft has not reached the desired success (yet) is the propagation of their cloud solution platform.
Microsoft Azure platform has been around for some time now.  And strangely enough, the critics are more or less aligned on this one: A good solid offering, but MS did a bad job on marketing it.  And that's strange for a company like MS, as that has always been one of their key strengths in the past.

But it should be clear that even with recent takeovers from competitors SAP and Oracle this does not mean that Microsoft is running behind, on the contrary.  Microsoft has put its pawns on the chessboard and is (almost) ready to play.

And what about any other players than the big three? 

Google, the household name when it comes to the cloud, isn't free from glitches either.  It would also be interesting to see if they can increase the acceptance of their business solutions with business users as well.  Google depends heavily on their advertising model.  For that, they go through everything you do on the internet: all your searches, all your mail, ...
How is Google going to convince companies that their business critical data is stored safe with them?

Maybe the real threat comes from another familiar name, albeit maybe a bit unexpected here: Amazon.
Amazon, still a relatively young company, made it from an online book store to a software company.
While Amazon did not escape the run of outages in 2011, at least they communicated clearly about them.  Always.
They seem to understand the need of information of the users in such cases, in order to uphold confidence of the community in their solution.

When Denmark based ProISV, a software developer focussed on ISV's (Independent Software Vendors), released their Ax Cloud solution, they made the link with Amazon.  (Betting on two horses actually, as they also work with MS Azure.)

Maybe IBM can become an important player here.  They have the servers and infrastructure experience, they have made the transition to a services company as well.

Conclusion
The software business is on the move, to the cloud.  We gonna see lots of announcements and news stories focussing on ERP in the cloud in 2012, without doubt. 
As details of the next major release of Dynamics Ax (version 7.0, post Ax 2012) will gradually become available in 2012, it will also be exciting times for Ax customers.

A touch of Dynamics Ax

One of the more interesting features of the latest version of Dynamics Ax, where I had high expectations, were the touch enabled features in the production area.
During last week's Technical Conference in Nice,  we saw a nice build up towards the demo of Manufacturing Execution, the new name of the Shop Floor module.

• During one of the keynotes the unique position of Microsoft was highlighted.  It's the only vendor in the market that serves both consumers and businesses.  Imagine the experiences those teams can share?
  Touch screens for mobile phones are more than common these days.  We see an increase in touch functions for standard PC's with each release of Windows.  These developers of Microsoft must have tons and tons of experience with touch driven solutions.  Touch enabled features seem like an obvious thing today.  Can you imagine Windows Mango without touch?
• Key note speakers talked about Dynamics Ax and the use of Kinect, control Ax with gestures.  There exists a software development kit, Kinect is coming to the PC.  So yes, why not bringing it on to the business floor, the ShopFloor?  Already the next step.
• If you look at the user interface of Dynamics Ax Retail, you can't help but notice it has touch enabled features all over the place.  It's very clear what the developers had in mind when working on it.

The intro of the session was promising, as we were being introduced to the configuration of the terminal screens.   You can do some customizations there, defining different kind of terminals, configure the form layout (without developing).  Stuff like enable/disable close actions, the action pane etc.

We saw a numeric keypad, with the big buttons, and...  that was it.  Touch features ended right there.

The layout of the other forms was totally not touch oriented.  The processes were in no way adapted to the specific needs of touch.
If I see the use of the scrollbars, the way dropdown fields are used, the build up of the grid, ... Without mouse and keyboard, you are lost.

I've been working with Dynamics Ax on the production floor for almost 10 years now, making touch enabled input screens.  Customizing some interfaces or creating new ones, adapting the flow of data entry to what machine operators need.   I know when it works and even more when it doesn't work and this... 

I really hoped we would be getting something out of the box, ready to be deployed at a machine near us but no such luck.
The speaker tried to save the day, by saying stuff like 'you can always increase the font size' to set the grid height.  But he knew he wasn't very convincing.
Sorry to say, but the guys working on Ax 2012 in the production area didn't get 'touch'.  Microsoft really missed a chance here.
Still plenty of room for partners to bring in there solutions though.

But to end of with a positive note: You don't pay full price for an ME client.

Cumulative update 2 for Dynamics Ax 2012 released

Even with launch events still going on all over the world, Microsoft already released cumulative update number 2 for Dynamics Ax 2012.
70+ fixes are included in the update.  RapidStart issues, performance issues with the GAB, workflow, client crashes, ... Something for everyone it seems.
This update of course includes the fixes included in update 1, that's why they call it cumulative :-)
More information can be found on the support website, over here.

Are you crazy or ...?

A beautiful city in the south of France, at the Côte d'Azur
Relaxing temperatures, a ray of sunlight through the palm trees

And 800 people locked inside an auditorium with all the windows blinded
There must be a tech convention going on...

It's the Dynamics Ax Technical Conference 2011 at the Acropolis in Nice!

Some excellent conditions to make this a great success. But the Demo Gods are not with us...
Already saw a Visual Studio crashing, an AOS server reluctant to start up.  But other than that some good informative sessions. Answering some questions, but also bringing more to mind...
More to follow.

Electronic concrete

Virtual Launch event of Microsoft Dynamics Ax 2012 today.  Can't miss it!  Microsoft really pulled out the big guns.  Steve Ballmer, Kyril Tatarinov, Hal Howard, ...

A one hour event, with a nice mix of promotional talk, some demo's, user experiences.  The message is clear:

•    Ax 2012 is released
•    soon on a computer near you
•    in better shape then ever...

More to come.

Oh and the title of this post?  Microsoft compared deploying it's competitor's ERP as like 'pouring electronic concrete'.  Pretty vivid image, not?

Dynamics Ax 2012 is compatible with Windows 7 - Did you expect otherwise?

It looks like a formality, but still they have to go through the proces.  After Dynamics Ax 2009 already got a green light (see here and here), and since Windows XP is no longer supported for Ax 2012 (see here), it was now time to put Dynamics Ax 2012 to the test.

The results of the jury (we didn't expect anything else): Microsoft Dynamics Ax 2012 is compatible with Windows 7.  Now it's official.   (Both 32 bit and 64.)

This means it passed Microsoft installation, performance, reliability, and security tests.
And they can put that on the box :-)

Dynamics Ax 2012 Global Virtual Launch Event set for September 8 2011

Microsoft is increasing his marketing efforts for the next release of Dynamics Ax.  It has scheduled a Dynamics Ax 2012 Global Virtual Launch Event on September 8, 2011.  So watch out for more information to come.

The Ax 2012 info on Microsoft.com, the launch page available to the public, is up for some time already.

PartnerSource, the site for Microsoft Dynamics Ax partners, got updated recently:
See for example the launch page over here or here.

Update: Registration is now open for the launch event, so head over here to register.