Microsoft Dynamics AX retail roadmap aims to integrate sales, commerce, service with more flexible tools, analytics

Tablets as the new cash registers and smartphones as the new shopper's assistant: These were some of the concepts Microsoft officials showed off as they discussed the roadmap for Dynamics AX for Retail at Convergence 2015 in Atlanta this week.

AX for Retail 2012 R3 CU8 is the latest version of Dynamics' leading retail software, one that offers offline and caching features, an e-commerce platform for ISVs ,and Azure integration. But, said Ashvin Mathew, Microsoft GM Dynamics Retail & Commerce, the next version of AX for Retail (codenamed "AX 7") will continue the company's drive toward both mobile and cloud.

"If you wanted to deploy a store completely on the cloud, you could do that," Mathew said. "We're using what we call Cloud [point-of-sale (POS)] as well as Modern POS. Many of you have seen the Modern POS, this is the version of the POS we run on the tablet [in the latest AX for Retail]. You can take exactly the same POS and run it on a browser. Those are the things we're going to enable as a part of our roadmap. We're leaving the deployment open to you and in any combination possible - the ability to deploy a few Modern POSes to give you local, offline capability, just in case you lose your connection from the store to the cloud. And run a few of those POSes on a browser, on tablets, increasing the ability of your associates to go completely on the cloud or completely on-premise."

Flexibility was a key theme of the presentation, both flexibility of AX deployment for an individual retailer and flexibility for individual customer associates and managers using the AX solution in the store. For instance, Mathew pointed to the trend ...