Gartner's Magic Quadrant on ERP's places Microsoft Dynamics AX as a Leader

Hello Friends,

Microsoft Dynamics AX was recently positioned as a leader in Gartner’s 2012 Magic Quadrant for Single-Instance ERP for Product-Centric Midmarket Companies along with SAP Business All-In-One

Source: www.gartner.com

Microsoft Dynamics AX is the most scalable of the four Microsoft Dynamics ERP systems; the others are Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Dynamics GP and Microsoft Dynamics SL. It also has the clearest strategy for industry verticalization, with specific functionality for discrete and process manufacturing, retail, wholesale/distribution and services, as well as the public sector in selected countries.

Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 close to doubles the functionality found in Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0, and that together with the changes to the technical architecture and greatly enhanced features of its business model organizational structures, indicates the progress that the solution has made. It also indicates the significant change that customers will experience when upgrading from previous versions

Strengths

·         The flexibility and extensibility of Microsoft Dynamics AX makes it a strong solution for midsize customers and should be of particular interest to large companies trying to satisfy divergent business unit needs, such as multimode manufacturing. Discrete, process and lean manufacturing principles have been integrated into one solution and can be used in parallel. The system also enables users to combine solutions from various industries. However, this flexibility means that consistent, centralized change management is key.

·         One of Microsoft Dynamics' strengths is the way it leverage the Microsoft application platform and productivity suite, with enhanced integrations to Microsoft's Visual Studio, SQL Server and BI, and SharePoint. Throughout the system, analytical capabilities have been more deeply integrated. Early adopters whom Gartner interviewed highlighted the ease of adding data visualizations and drill-down capabilities.

·         The new architecture of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 supports the parallel deployment of extensions built by different partners into one solution. The partner layer can host multiple extensions, which are well separated from each other but can interact through clearly defined interfaces.

·         Role-based UI personalization is seen by customers as being very flexible. 

·         Customers praise Microsoft's Premier support. Many customers value a strong relationship with Microsoft's development team. However, to scale, Microsoft needs to find a way to disseminate the same level of knowledge to partners, or embrace this direct contact as a differentiator and resource it.

·         The new modeling capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 allow customers to graphically model various aspects of an enterprise, like the organizational setup and relationships between various business units, the allocation of people to organization units and the respective setup of user rights and access options. This model, while not yet making Microsoft Dynamics AX a fully model-driven packaged application, positions it better for upper midmarket companies, which tend to have dynamic and complex hierarchies.