With Preview Program Launching This Quarter, Microsoft Shows Off More Dynamics AX 7 Details at WPC 2015

At Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) 2015 this week, Microsoft Dynamics AX officials clarified the release timeline for AX 7, explaining that the upcoming AX 7 preview program, which is still recruiting participants, will begin this quarter. They also showed partners a few more details of the new AX 7 interface, including the use of Power BI within the new workspace construct and in-memory KPIs.

The outcome of the preview program will determine the timing for the general release to Azure and the subsequent AX 7 on-premise release, which is estimated for the first half of 2016. The preview which will focus on deployments to the public cloud and is expected to last three to six months, but Microsoft advised that the AX team will keep the timeline for the preview flexible while they watch the progress that partners and customers make.

"It depends on how everything goes. We are really committed to come out of it with something that is super high quality and meets the bars that we have for these cloud services," said Dynamics AX product marketing manager Christian Pedersen.

If all goes according to plan, Microsoft is looking at an on-premise release of AX 7 in the first half of 2016.

"Once we get [AX 7 on Azure] into market, we will follow within a three to six month period with an on-premise version of AX 7," Pedersen told the audience.