Dynamics AX Overview

The latest minor version of Dynamics AX, Dynamics AX 2012 R3, became generally available in May 2014. The version has capabilities for warehouse and distribution functions, retail point-of-sale mobile solutions, procurement features to manage vendor requests and proposals, and budget planning improvements such as rule-based allocations and what-if scenarios. Updates to AX 2012 R3 arrive in the form of cumulative updates and generally provide bug fixes and regulatory updates for customers using financial and payroll features.

The next version of Dynamics AX (originally named AX 7 and code-named Rainier) has been rebranded as Dynamics Operations. It became available as a Microsoft-hosted service in the first quarter of 2016 and is expected to be available on-premises in the middle of 2017 (delayed from late 2016). Dynamics Operations is the first Microsoft-hosted release, residing as a multitenant offering in Azure. Customers planning to deploy Dynamics Operations on-premises will have new requirements, including Windows Server 2016, SQL Server 2016, and Lifecycle Services. The dependency on Azure Stack has been removed. Dynamics Operations can only be deployed through Lifecycle Services, an Azure-hosted environment that controls the deployment, updating, and management of servers in a Dynamics Operations environment.