Dynamics 365 is a multi-billion dollar business in the cloud, Microsoft general manager for operations apps Muhammad Alam told the audience at the User Group Summit 2019 this week.

The business overall is growing at a 40 percent annual rate, with Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations (D365FO), the company's enterprise ERP solution, growing at an even faster rate, he said. As evidence of the growth, Alam stated that his team is seeing 250 percent more unique monthly active users in production for D365FO. Hundreds of thousands of users are working in their SaaS solutions on a daily basis.

The retail segment is "one of the fastest growing," he said. Microsoft is registering over 9.8 million checkouts being processed through the Dynamics 365 Retail solution, soon to become Dynamics 365 Commerce. And there are 5,600 stores now using the solution's point-of-sale application.

Alam also said this week that Microsoft has recently made important hires on both the ERP and CRM side.