With the dust settling on the Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft has turned its attention back to the enterprise. The software giant on Monday took the lid off new advances in the architecture of the next version of Microsoft Dynamics AX.
Code-named AX 6, the latest version of the enterprise resource-planning solution aims to empower independent software vendors (ISVs) to bring solutions to market faster while simultaneously reducing product life-cycle investments and expanding market opportunities.
Hal Howard, corporate vice president of Microsoft Dynamics ERP Research and Development, said the new version promises “rich functionality, advanced architecture, and the full power of the Microsoft stack.” At the same time, he said, Microsoft is working to keep it simple by “streamlining application deployment, maintenance and upgradability.”
Accelerating Software Development
New to Dynamics AX 6 is a model-driven, layered architecture that accelerates software development, requiring less coding than building from scratch and easing maintenance and upgradability. Microsoft said this allows developers to build high-value functionality quicker and better.
The new version also offers pre-built interoperability with the Microsoft Application Platform, including Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 and Visual Studio 2010, and other Microsoft technologies such as Microsoft Office 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint 2010. Microsoft said this allows developers to spend less time on technical integration and compatibility, and increases the breadth of developer resources available to ISVs.
“This is a welcome move,” said Al Hilwa, an analyst at IDC. “I think positioning Dynamics differently from traditional big-bang ERP is a good way to leverage Microsoft’s developer platform strengths into a key capability of Dynamics.”
Hilwa pointed to what he called a RAD shift over time to more business-centric areas such as BPM and highly configurable package applications. He sees this as a move in the same direction, where rich applications begin to become rich frameworks to build on additional custom functionality….