SAP on Microsoft Azure is an AX opportunity, says Dynamics ERP GM Pedersen

Microsoft Dynamics AX has increasingly eyed the top of the enterprise ERP food chain in the last year, mounting a range of attacks directly against SAP. From the larger Microsoft perspective, such offensives may be a bit awkward. SAP has twenty year relationship with the company and also increasingly faces off with Dynamics AX on sales opportunities. And with the news this week of a new range of SAP solutions using Azure and Office, it's clear that the two companies will continue their partnership with a renewed focus.

The Dynamics AX team took this week's announcement as an opportunity to contrast their own unique approach to using Azure in enterprise ERP against SAP's - and to take a few new shots at their competitor's cloud competence.

Enterprises that host or integrate their SAP solutions to Azure will be even better positioned to start adding Dynamics AX instances in subsidiaries or remote sites, writes Dynamics ERP general manager Christian Pedersen in a new blog post. He explains:

"As a customer that is already running SAP, but perhaps looking for support on specific workloads like subsidiary or divisional ERP or help with specific workloads or LOB strategies, having both solutions run on Microsoft Azure makes it even easier to connect than ever before. Moreover you can expect to see incremental benefit from leveraging Microsoft Dynamics AX on Microsoft Azure IaaS."

Pedersen and the rest of the AX team seem to understand that AX must distinguish itself from Microsoft's partners in its use of Azure, Office, and