Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2 Reaches General Availability

"Today, I am pleased to announce that Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 R2 is generally available in 36 countries!" - that was the message late Friday from Dynamics general manager Christian Pedersen on the Edge blog late on Friday, as the December 1 release date approached.

Awareness of the Dynamics AX 2012 R2 release has been growing for the last few month.  In Pedersen's view, the top improvements of R2 is the improved multi-language and multi-locale support in a single Dynamics AX instance. 

"We have remodeled the way we can drive multipel deploymens in a single instance of AX - thta's very releveant for the global rollout for multi-national companies," said Pedersen in a new interview.  The global release includes all supported languages and 36 localizations, with launch efforts around the world.

With the AX 2012 R2 release, Microsoft also wants to hightlight its ability to pull in the latest technology from other divisions, including reporting with Power View and the latest e-commmere capabilities of SharePoint. 

"We now have in-memory BI as an integrated part of R2 - all baked into PowerView," said Pedersen. "We're excited both from a customer perspective and because of the innovation we have driven together with the SQL team.  When SQL Server announced Power View, they announced it by showing AX 2012 R2 with PowerView integrated into it." Similarly, Pedersen says the SharePoint team's e-commerce enhancements were released in conjunction with the AX 2012 R2 release.  "When the SharePoint team announced those e-commerce capabilities, they showed AX 2012 R2 leveraging the feature."