Written By Jeff Onesto, Director of Business Development, ASi (Originally released on MSDynamicsWorld.com)
As many of you have read, Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 is currently in CTP-3 (Customer-Technical-Preview) Release 3, which means the RTM (Release-To-Manufacturing) isn’t too far off. At Advanced Systems Integration (ASi), we are consistently asked by existing customers running Microsoft Dynamics AX our thoughts and suggestions on upgrading. This is now even more critical as Microsoft has created a migration path for company’s running 3.0 SPx to upgrade directly to AX 2009. By allowing customers to ‘skip’ an entire version Microsoft has just lowered the cost of ownership of Dynamics AX – one data migration and one re-training program. Many AX users are wondering, “Should we migrate directly to AX 2009 or migrate to a mature Dynamics AX 4.0?” In this article, I will present a few key factors to consider when weighing your options for upgrading.
Large > 100 User and/or High Volume Organizations
Large organizations face a different set of considerations than their smaller counterparts. At ASi, many of our customers consist of large manufacturers with multi-plant, multi-site organization structures with additionally complex distribution requirements. Some of our larger Consumer Package Goods (CPG) customers in the soft-goods (Apparel) industry are capable of receiving up to ~30,000to 40,000 packages per day during the peak season. One of our largest customers by way of AX users will ramp-up to almost 800 concurrent AX users by the end of this year.
So for some of these complex and large enterprise organizations running AX 3.0 SPx the process of transitioning to a new release such as AX 2009 requires significant amounts of planning and testing. For these organizations, we are most likely to suggest waiting until the 1st service pack is released for AX 2009. The first service pack typically addresses any “undocumented features” and is a significant step toward application maturity/stability. Also, companies will find many advantages of upgrading directly to AX 2009 versus 4.0 other than the obvious feature and functionality improvements. By allowing customers to ‘skip’ an entire version Microsoft has just lowered the cost of ownership of Dynamics AX – one data migration and one re-training program.
We recommend not getting too far behind the publisher’s releases. Although possible to sit on an older release partners and Microsoft turn the majority of their efforts and focus to newer versions.
Smaller <100 Users and/or High Growth Organizations
Small organizations with aggressive growth plans in my experience don’t have the time to pay enough attention to anticipating future system requirements as they are working feverishly to support and grow existing market share. An example of these companies are many of the action sports (apparel) companies that go-to-market with a great, suddenly in-demand design and find themselves growing at unprecedented rates 100%, 200% or 300% year-over- year. So for these less complex yet fast growing organizations running AX 3.0 SPx transitioning to a new release such as AX 2009 is less about risk and more about cash flow and time. In this example, I also would recommend upgrading directly to AX 2009, as many times functional requirements are not known until they are needed tomorrow and running the latest edition of Dynamics AX may provide the greatest chance of that functionality being available at a moment’s notice.
One major caveat to our above recommendations for moving to the newest release AX 2009 is the actual final RTM date and the 1st service pack release date (yet to be announced specifically by Microsoft) and the pressure your organization is currently placing on AX 3.0 SPx . I have seen as much as 6 months pass between the planning of an upgrade and the actual go-live date. This lag is usually caused by the time lapse of the budget approval to project planning to the data preparation process. Realistically, an organization could require more functionality TODAY (April 2008) because they may be for example running out of record I.D.’s and therefore can’t wait until after the first service pack has been released for AX 2009. These types of organizations may be best to migrate to AX 4.0 and then move to AX 2009 at their convenience.
At ASi, we are excited for the newest edition of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. They say history is a good predictor of future performance and each version of Microsoft Dynamics AX has improved over the last and I expect nothing less from our friends in Redmond, WA. My advice to those executives responsible for this decision is to always work closely with your AX partner. ASi was one of six partners in the United States to earn the designation of “Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 Partner Launch Champion” and we are well on our way to earning the similar designation for AX 2009.
For additional information about ASi “Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 “Partner Launch Champion” status, please visit our website www.advancedsystemsintegration.com.
