Dynamics 365/AX in the enterprise: Microsoft touts strong uptake, shorter implementation cycles

At D365UG/AXUG Summit 2017 in Nashville, Microsoft Dynamics AX and 365 for Finance and Operations users and partners heard from Muhammad Alam, the new general manager for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, Enterprise edition (D365FOE).

Alam, who provided a keynote session at Summit, is a thirteen-year veteran of the Dynamics AX space who has roots in accounting. He worked with SAP and Oracle products before joining Microsoft to work with Axapta and Dynamics AX. He climbed the management ranks across numerous roles related to Dynamics AX and 365: participating in and managing implementations, from AX 3.0 through 2012; managing Dynamics AX in the Americas for Microsoft Consulting Services; and joining the engineering team three years ago to lead the solution architecture team. Lastly, he has led engineering for Dynamics 365 customer experience apps.

Eighteen-month report card for D365FOE

Alam told D365UG/AXUG Summit attendees that Microsoft sees D365FOE's progress thus far as a success that has surpassed expectations:

"Year one of [D365FOE] was phenomenally successful. It beat all [our] aspirations in terms of how many customers signed up and, in 18 months, how many customers are using it in production. That's what I'm really excited about. We have hundreds of customers actively using it in the cloud on a daily basis, across all the workloads."

With D365FOE, Microsoft now measures its success based on active usage on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, as well as by tracking Net Promoter Score (NPS) as a proxy for customer satisfaction. Alam explained:

"That is the Power BI dashboard I wake up to every day...If either ...