Dynamics Profile: Building an AX MVP’s skill set from the ground up

When Tommy Skaue received the email from Microsoft in October naming him one of its newest Microsoft Dynamics AX MVPs, he was so excited he couldn't sleep a wink that night.

"I got the email on the first of October and that night I was just so wired up, and I just couldn't sleep," said Skaue, a systems engineer and Dynamics AX developer at Axdata Norge AS in Norway.

After years as a web developer, Skaue jumped into Dynamics AX with both feet in 2009.

"I was working in another location and my wife and I wanted to move back to the region of Norway where we are now so I started calling around to any company that worked with anything in the Microsoft platform or something web-development related," he said.

While he didn't find any web development jobs in his preferred platform - ASP.NET - there was one guy, a consultant, who was working from home with Dynamics AX who was very interested in Skaue's skills.

"He was interested because he wasn't a developer. He was a functional consultant, and he was eager to get a developer to work with him," Skaue. "So I went on an interview and I had never heard about Dynamics AX before." Despite the lack of experience, the potential employer told Skaue not to worry because even though he hadn't heard about Dynamics AX, it was already becoming a popular product.

"He said if I jumped on this position, I wouldn't have a problem finding another employer where I could work with Dynamics AX," Skaue said. "So I agreed but it ...