Dynamics AX 2009 or Dynamics AX 4.0: What is the Best Migration Path for Your Organization?

As has been widely reported, 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 regularly asked by existing customers running Microsoft Dynamics AX our thoughts and suggestions for 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 assess two key situations for factors to consider when weighing your options for upgrading.

1. For Large > 100 Users 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 ~30,000 to 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 1^st service pack is released for AX 2009.

The first service pack typically addresses any "undocumented ...