Taking a significant step on the path toward a single, consolidated enterprise application suite, Microsoft yesterday announced general availability of a major new release of its Dynamics AX ERP package.
The new release, Dynamics AX 4.0, includes a simplified, role-based user interface and tight integration with key Microsoft infrastructure products such as SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services for analytics and Windows SharePoint Services, Microsoft's portal product. Dynamics AX (formerly called Axapta) becomes the first Microsoft ERP platform to include many of these features.
Eventually other Microsoft enterprise application products -- including Dynamics NAV (Navision), Dynamics GP (Great Plains), and Dynamics SL (Solomon) -- will share similar features such as role-based user interfaces based on SharePoint Services. By 2008, as part of the company's Project Green, Microsoft plans to merge its existing ERP products into a single managed code base. (Read about Microsoft's master plan.)
"AX 4.0 starts to bring the whole Microsoft story full circle," said Ray Wang, senior analyst at Forrester Research. "With the addition of notions like roles and a common user interface, you can start to see [that] everything fits between the applications and Microsoft infrastructure like Office, SharePoint, and Vista. We're starting to see what the future looks like according to Microsoft."
The new release of Dynamics AX also features several manufacturing-specific enhancements, including product configurator and supply chain improvements as well as a new manufacturing service module. The manufacturing service module will allow organizations to automate plant floor service tasks such as maintenance of complex machines. The module can be used to schedule service on a one-time or ongoing basis and track and account for employee time spent on service activities, said Jeff McKee, director of global product management for Dynamics AX in an interview.
The manufacturing service module must be licensed separately from existing, core Dynamics AX modules, McKee noted.
Microsoft has made additional improvements to AX that appeal directly to manufacturing companies. The 4.0 release, for example, includes enhancements that support organizations and partner networks that operate distribution networks with multiple warehouses. Documents supporting processes such as extended sales purchase orders, for example, can be automatically entered into multiple local instances of AX.
Using previous versions of Dynamics AX, manufacturers operating with multiple warehouses often were required to manually reenter such information.
Dynamics AX 4.0 also includes improvements that will help manufacturers implement available-to-promise processes. The product configurator in the new release of the application is more closely integrated with its sales and marketing module, allowing for better visibility into materials and manufacturing capacity needed to produce an order.
The improvements to the Dynamics AX user interface are a key development that will help Microsoft eventually merge the application with its other business systems, said Forrester's Wang. The role-based user interface will allow manufacturers to present to specific individuals in the enterprise just the tools and information they need to do their jobs, McKee maintained.
For example, a sales manager would see only the sales-related information that is most relevant to him. Since the role-based portal is based on Microsoft's SharePoint Services, AX customers can use the tool's Web Parts development tools to create their own role-based interfaces.
In release 4.0, Microsoft has also upgraded the look and feel of the core Dynamics AX user interface to
appear much more like the company's Outlook product. (Read about Microsoft's effort to more tightly integrate desktop and business applications.)
"That will allow customers to significantly reduce training time," McKee stated. "People who are familiar with Outlook will instantly understand the user experience."
Other enhancements to Dynamics AX with the 4.0 release include Japanese and Chinese language representation through support of Unicode and a new Integration Framework that uses a host of Microsoft technologies -- including BizTalk Server 2006 and SQL Server Integration Services to connect AX with other ERP systems including those of SAP, Oracle, and JD Edwards.
Microsoft also spelled out long-anticipated plans to support radio frequency identification (RFID) implementations from within Dynamics AX. Early in 2007, Microsoft said, it will provide upgrades that allow Dynamics AX users to see basic RFID-generated shipping information and to monitor the health and performance of key RFID infrastructure. (Read about Microsoft's push to upgrade its BizTalk Server to support EDI and RFID.)
The initial RFID support in Dynamics AX, McKee said, targets manufacturers that are implementing relatively rudimentary "slap and ship" deployments, in most cases to satisfy partner requirements. Support for more advanced RFID-enabled business processes will follow in between two and three years, McKee said.
Current Microsoft Dynamics AX customers using release 3.0 and covered by the company's enhancement agreement will receive the 4.0 version without additional charge. Customers currently running pre-3.0 versions of Dynamics AX will need to upgrade to 3.0 before upgrading to the new 4.0 version, McKee said.