Windows 7 Home Premium Dynamics AX 2009 The 'Halo

Microsoft began rolling out to clients on June 2 the latest edition of its high-end ERP application, Dynamics AX 2009.The latest Axapta release (also known as AX 5.0) has plenty of new bells and whistles: A compliance middle dashboard that displays all sorts of key overall performance indicators (KPIs) in a single see; time-zone support; integration using the (stil-not-yet-shipping) SQL Server 2008 database release. But what caught my eye most about AX 2009 when Microsoft not too long ago demo;d it for me was how it really is the showcase app for so various different Microsoft technologies.“What Halo is for Xbox,Office 2007 Professional, we are for Microsoft;s application platform,” said Kees Hertogh, Director of Product Management for Dynamics AX.AX 2009 includes and/or makes use of every Microsoft technology but the kitchen sink: Like the rest of Microsoft;s Dynamics family, AX now incorporates the Office look-and-feel throughout the application and sports an Office-Ribbon-style action pane.Because it embeds the Windows Workflow engine within the app, it includes more built-in business-process automation and allows admins to set rules and policies that apply to several modules.Business intelligence,Office 2007 Keygen, Microsoft-style,Windows 7 Home Premium, is part of the app; AX 2009 embeds SQL Server OLAP cubes, and ships with a set of predefined KPIs.The new ERP app has a back-and-forth button and a breadcrumb bar that would be familiar to anyone who has used Internet Explorer.Support for Office Unified Communications Server is integrated directly into the product, so that users will be able to integrate their PBX and VOIP systems directly with all the back-end ERP system. Ditto with Microsoft SharePoint Server,Windows 7 Pro, BizTalk Server and Project Server — not surprisingly, integration hooks are build in.AX publishes Web services, such as credit-card processing and shipment via UPS. And other vendors/users can create custom Web services that might be consumed by AX 2009. “We use Microsoft;s SOA technologies to expose and consume these services,” Hertogh said. Microsoft has been encouraging developers to integrate its Office Ribbon, its Windows Workflow technology and assistance for its Excel Services technology into their own custom line-of-business apps. Relatively couple of have done so, to date — for lack of tools, fear of becoming also locked into Microsoft;s stack and/or other reasons.Do you think third-party app vendors will start incorporating more Microsoft technologies into their on-premise and/or Web apps, moving forward? Why or why not?Update: Brandon George,Microsoft Office 2010 Professional Plus, Senior Technical Architect with Sunrise Technologies — who has posted a good Q&A with a couple of crucial Dynamics execs — said he thinks app vendors who “want to stay or become more profitable” would be well served by incorporating more of the Microsoft stack. Agree?