New SharePoint Offering May Extend Power of Dynamics AX to Web Processes

Microsoft Dynamics AX is a powerful enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, most popular among large manufacturers and e-businesses. It has modules that support business intelligence, customer relationship management (CRM), human resources management, collaborative workspaces, and project management, among others.

In addition to these strengths, Dynamics AX may have a powerful future in being integrated with Microsoft's new offering of SharePoint Designer with Office 2007 to creating online flows and collaboration. SharePoint Designer is part of the Microsoft server offering created to deliver rich-looking sites.

This new offering "is going to allow information workers, or super users to easily create the flows, and collaboration sites needed by them, and managed by their IT department," says Brandon George, a senior tech architect, in a posting on his blog about Dynamics AX.

"The future I see here is the front UI (user interface) for most information worker processes inside Dynamics AX today!"

George's vision is of "custom web parts for achieving business goals, and out of the box ones as well, that then allow an information worker to tailor their SharePoint site experience, targeted for their usage of the business logic, in a mashup of Dynamics AX web parts, Office System documents, and Software + Services offerings. The goal would be to allow the information worker, if they so choose, the abilities to better manage their flows."