Microsoft Dynamics AX has come a long way: from being a by-product of a collaboration between IBM and a Danish company with stand-alone accounting features to a robust ERP that caters to the needs of businesses worldwide, the journey of Dynamics AX is quite impressive.
Today, Dynamics AX has grown to become one the most widely-used ERP systems across the globe, and is helping numerous small and large companies operate efficiently and meet the changing demands of a dynamic market. Let’s have a look at this evolution.
1998: IBM Axapta
Microsoft Dynamics AX was originally developed as a collaboration between IBM and Danish firm – Damgaard Data- as IBM Axapta. It was released in March 1998 and included its own development system – a combination of the MorphX environment and X++ programming language. Axapta tightly integrated general accounting and business functions with specific applications for finance, trade, logistics, and production.
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Capabilities
Designed for the global marketplace, IBM Axapta supported multi-national currency, and multi-tax formats and was multi-lingual. The software was packaged in four basic configurations featuring the below selected business and financial modules:
- Financial Series: General ledger, cash flow management, bank manager, currency, accounts receivable, accounts payable, and free-text invoicing
- Trade Series: Sales order, including invoicing, purchase order handling, and inventory
- Logistics Series: Trade agreements, trade budgeting, discounts, bill of materials, and material and capacity requirements planning
- Production Series: Material requirements planning, work orders and production routes, capacity planning, shop floor control, and job planning
2006: Dynamics AX 4.0
In June 2006, Microsoft announced the general availability of Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0. Touted to work like other familiar Microsoft software, AX 4.0 was launched to enable organizations to improve their business operations and gain a competitive advantage. Through the use of web services and other enhancements, the highly anticipated new release delivered a complete ERP package to automate and streamline processes across a company’s financials, customer relationships, business services, human resources, and supply chain.
Capabilities
- Dynamics AX 4.0 offered greater integration, flexibility, and extensibility to eliminate information silos and support improved decision-making.
- The service-oriented architecture helped organizations extend the application to fit unique business needs and also eased the upgrade path.
- Dynamics AX 4.0 brought together structured and unstructured data from different sources with ad hoc workflows.
- Web services offered opportunities to customize the solution to meet individual business needs, including role-based features and RSS feeds.
- The software worked across multiple systems and provided a complete view of business processes, enabling more confident and informed decision-making by users.
- An adapter for BizTalk server 2006 enabled users to access various line-of-business applications including those from Oracle and SAP.
- New capabilities included RFID-enabled supply chain to facilitate trading controls and automate subcontracting, and a new service-management functionality to automate manufacturing service processes.
Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 Service Pack 2 reached the end of extended support in 2016.
2008: Dynamics AX 2009
In June 2008, Microsoft announced the next version of its ERP solution – Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. The solution was launched with powerful new capabilities to help organizations streamline processes, reduce operational costs, manage compliance, and drive informed decision-making. The main focus of Dynamics AX 2009 was on businesses expanding globally, as the solution offered features to reduce complexity of managing operations across multiple locations.
Capabilities
- The new multi-site capabilities enabled users to manage complex global financial and supply chain processes more easily.
- Dynamics AX 2009 provided advanced planning and reporting capabilities through integration with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server.
- The role-based user experience, improved reporting and BI capabilities, and its improved platform harmonization made Dynamics 2009 the ideal choice for SMBs.
- Compliance centers, embedded workflows and country-specific functionality streamlined the process of meeting global and local regulatory compliance.
- Role centers and self-service BI tools gave employees access to critical business data and enabled them to prioritize tasks and improve productivity.
Support for Dynamics AX 2009 ended in 2011; however, support for Dynamics AX 2009 Service Pack 1 has been extended until 2021.
2011: Dynamics AX 2012
In September 2011, Microsoft released Dynamics AX 2012. It was made available and supported in more than 30 countries and 25 languages and was suitable for midsize to large enterprises. The solution was ideal for companies in manufacturing and distribution, but it was just as capable in meeting the needs of companies across multiple industry verticals. The solution could be installed on-premises or could be hosted in the cloud for remote accessibility over the web.
Capabilities
- Dynamics AX 2012 offered core accounting capabilities in addition to many others such as inventory management, warehouse and transportation management, demand and supply chain management, material requirements planning, production management, quality assurance, asset management, and business intelligence.
- Multi-language and multi-currency features made Dynamics AX 2012 a suitable option for companies operating globally.
- The industry-specific functionality helped meet the growing needs of manufacturers in several industries including electronics, industrial machinery, aerospace, and consumer products.
Today, Microsoft has ended mainstream support for Dynamics 2009 as well as Dynamics 2012.
2016: AX7
The next version, released in February 2016, let go of the year and version details in the name and was simply called AX, although it was widely known as AX7. This new version was a major upgrade with an entirely new UI that was delivered through a browser-based HTML5 client. This version lasted only a few months, as Dynamics AX was rebranded Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations in October 2016, and then as Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations in July 2017.
Capabilities
- The initial release of AX focused on the new technology platform, and therefore made very minor changes to ensure a smoother transition from previous versions to AX7.
- Over the years, LCS has evolved tremendously and today is an essential part of AX. Today, LCS is the toolset that powers AX – from initial deployment to performance tuning, code analysis to business process modeling.
- The new HTML/JavaScript client replaces both the former Windows client and Enterprise Portal. Now, everything is available through the browser. You no longer have to install, or administer clients or terminal services.
- With billions of dollars of investment in Azure data centers, Dynamics AX offered high availability and fault tolerant deployments – that have now become the norm. Users no longer had to worry about how many servers to buy; flexible deployments allowed them to scale up and down the number of application servers to meet dynamic needs.
- With MorphX being made available inside Visual Studio, users could take advantage of Visual Studio projects, mix traditional X++ development with other languages, and leverage TFS for version control.
- The freedom to not use the X++ interpreter not only made code execution faster, but also enabled smoother interoperability with other .NET languages.
2017: Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations
Dynamics 365 is a cloud-based application experience based on the common data model that comprises the ERP and CRM applications released by Microsoft in November 2016. The solutions can be deployed on the cloud and offer role-based subscriptions. Dynamics 365 is available in two editions, Business Edition (for small and medium-sized organizations) and Enterprise Edition (for medium to large organizations). In July 2017, the CRM product name was changed to Customer Engagement Plan.
Capabilities
- The modern and adaptable platform offers hybrid deployment options including web and mobile that help adjust to changing requirements.
- The purpose-built apps help manage precise business functions like field service, customer service, and project service automation, and they can be independently deployed. You can start with the apps you need, and as your business grows, you can adopt additional capabilities with ease as all of the apps work together.
- Built-in AI and machine learning capabilities allow you to unearth critical insights into business, customers, and competitors and enable you to drive the right business outcomes.
- Improved capabilities across fulfillment and procurement enable an automated and streamlined supply chain.
- The centralized global financial management solution offers robust financial intelligence and analytics in real-time.
- Role-based workspaces provide intelligent automation, task prioritization, O365 integration, and maximize productivity and efficiency.
- The global tax engine and flexible chart of accounts allow you to adjust to changing financial requirements.
An ERP Solution for All
The evolution of Dynamics AX has truly been remarkable. Over the years, the enterprise application has been a front runner in the market and has incorporated several modern features to meet the changing needs of the industry and keep pace with technological advances. The latest version of Dynamics AX – Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations – is built with digital transformation at its core. The system aims to completely transform how organizations do business – right from leveraging the latest technology to integrating applications, role-based workspaces to purpose-built processes, deeper customer engagement and extreme scalability. With features to suit every kind and size of business, Dynamics 365 is truly an ERP solution for all.
Learn more about how your business can benefit from the latest version of Dynamics AX – Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations.
