Dan Brown, Microsoft’s AX R&D general manager, in keynote sessions in Orlando last week said that the next major version of Microsoft Dynamics AX, codenamed AX 7, is expected to be released at the end of the year exclusively on the Microsoft Azure platform.
An on-premise version is expected to be available six months later release.
Three primary updates will characterize AX 7:
– a new user experience,
– the extended use of Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS),
– the prevalence of the Microsoft Cloud, or Azure.
The AX 7 workspace is reimagined as a panorama of colorful, pictured tiles that quickly allows the user to view to-do tasks, urgent actions, and any other work-related activities. This will enable users to share common activities with other end-users.
With the LCS task recorder, users can record and annotate tasks and keep other end-users informed.
There’s also the ability to link two browsers enabling users to collaborate side-by-side on a double screen.
“We are trying to eliminate clicks and give the production planner power within this user experience,” says Brown.
With AX 7 Microsoft is also making efforts to improve interoperability with its other products like Visual Studio, Office 365, Power BI, SharePoint, and Yammer.
AX 7 will more deeply embed Management Reporter in the interface, to make it the corporate performance management tool of record for AX ad an integral part of the initial deployment. “The more we bring these things together so you are just using the product, the better the overall experience,” Brown said.
X++ code customizations should remain unchanged, making upgrading to AX 7 seamless. However, developers should prepare to work with Visual Studio as their AX 7 development environment. AX will retain its X++ programming language, which is effectively a .NET language now, Brown said. The process for packaging and deploying X++ to an AX 7 instance is done through LCS.
Version 7 will be the first major release since last year’s AX 2012 R3, which added warehouse and transportation management, retail features, and tablet-based point of sale (POS).
This month i.e. June, AX 2012 CU9 will include rolled-up hotfixes, regulatory requirements, and platform capabilities, including compatibility for any new version of Windows.
Microsoft recognizes that not every business is keen on going from 0 to 120 mph on the cloud. “The idea of a hybrid cloud is not new,” says Brown. “We want to evolve to the cloud with you.”
Once the AX 7 on-premise version is released, you’ll have the option of using as much or as little of the cloud that you want. The software will also run on Azure Pack, identically packaging your data both on the cloud and on-premise, resulting in more symmetry and less friction.
Still, when it comes to Azure, companies still have questions about :security, privacy, and sovereignty of data. and ho to budget the cost “I think trustworthy computing is partially about privacy, but it’s also about high availability and disaster recovery, and redundancy,” said Brown. “Microsoft and Azure are investing heavily in data protection and security, and monitoring in our data centers. Microsoft has the widest range of data centers in the world.”
Brown hinted that he foresees more capabilities for mobile and on-premise in the future. ”
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