AX Users at Convergence Anticipate Goodies of Coming Upgrade, But Also Complain About Recurring Frustrations

Dynamics AX Users have a lot on their plates. Chief among their challenges: they are looking forward to a major upgrade--AX 2009 (AX 5.0) due out in a few months, which Microsoft promotes has having "500 new features."

How well will the new version solve recurring frustrations AX users have had in recent years?

Based on interviews with users and discussions at Convergence demos and other sessions, users who upgrade will find significant improvements. The head of IT from a company with $50 million annual sales, which has been testing AX 2009 for the past six months, says he especially appreciates how well it is integrated with such functions as business intelligence. He also praises the advance filtering, existence of 30 role centers, and that it works in 64-bit mode.

Yet some users are concerned that the new version won't solve certain recurring issues in AX 3.0 and 4.0--chief among them data archiving. They say this has been a problem for at least the past three years, and that Microsoft hasn't resolved it.

To smooth data archiving problems, some users have turned to third-party solutions. They say they are getting improved results, though, of course, at a price.

Another sore point for AX users turns out to be user customization. One user said that when his company customizes AX, "the system crashes." Indications from users who have sampled AX 2009 are that it reduces to some degree the amount of customizing that is necessary by anticipating user needs.

And still another complaint, from a large product builder, has to do with deleting models. "We are supporting 180 models," its IT head said. "We have plans for more of a traditional way of doing development QA, but we have problems deleting models."

It's unclear whether ...