The Year of the Cloud: How Coming Microsoft Products Will Make Dynamics AX the Basis of New Solutions

People have been talking about The Cloud for years, and now it’s arrived. 2010 for sure will be the year of the Cloud. And though it's not on any official calendar, those born under the year of the cloud are sure to be free thinkers, operational vs. capital based, have abilities to get projects going on their feet --- and into the cloud quickly.

Seriously, the next release,  or wave of Microsoft products, will enable more and more solutions to actually be true Hyrbid clouds. This means Dynamics AX customers will need to understand what is expected, as part of their solution design.  The next wave is just the very first part of what is on the horizon. Microsoft Dynamics AX is the business platform, which the rest of the platform makes use of to offer a total, single, hyrbid platform for users.

Most all businesses, in some form or fashion, have an interest level in the Cloud. When I talk to clients about Microsoft Azure, Microsoft's cloud platform, the biggest thing I see as an issue is what the cloud offers.  So here is my take on what the cloud offers now,  and likely in the future.

First, we must understand that  there will be two ways services and whole applications, including legacy, can live in the cloud.

As one approach, you have the true cloud based Software+Services, 'Three Screens and a Cloud' marketing tag lined approach. This includes services that are built using SQL Azure, .Net AppFabric, Windows Azure, etc. that are multi-tenant based. This means they can scale up or down, without need for the services of a system ...