Microsoft announced that Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 and Dynamics GP 2013 will be offered on its Azure cloud platform by the end of this year and stated that its next major release of the ERP portfolio will “evolve as an enterprise cloud service offering.”
Microsoft made the announcement Monday during the opening keynote at its Convergence 2012 business solutions conference in Houston. In a release on the keynote, Microsoft Business Solutions president Kirill Tatarinov noted that the cloud moves were specifically geared at attracting more SMBs to ERP on-demand services.
Also by the fourth quarter of 2012, Microsoft will deliver an updated version of Dynamics AX 2012 R2 with added “Web storefront” retail capabilities and in-context BI based on Microsoft SQL Server. For its Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2013 independent software vendor ecosystem, Microsoft will also offer specialized capabilities for industries such as manufacturing and retail hosted in its Azure environment.
Already updated recently were Dynamics AX 2012 and Dynamics AX 2012 for Retail. In the preview of plans, Microsoft stated it already has 33,000 Dynamics customers and 2.25 million users.
Rebecca Wettemann, VP of research at Nucleus Research, said that Microsoft has made Dynamics adoption more intriguing over the last year with mobile support and vertical functionality, though called Monday’s announcement “more incremental than groundbreaking.”
“However, they show the beginnings of an effective cloud execution strategy for Dynamics and the benefits of broader Microsoft research and development on usability and productivity for Dynamics users,” said Wettemann.
For additional info and video of the announcement from Microsoft, click here.
Justin Kern is senior editor at Information Management and can be reached at justin.kern@sourcemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @IMJustinKern.
