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[Kevin Rettig]

To my fellow AX 2009 people…  What upgrade path are you looking at?  Going to AX 2012 R3?  Or making the leap to Dynamics 365 for Operations.   What are some of the pros and cons of each that you are considering?

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Kevin Rettig
Manager, Application Development
Hobart / ITW
Dayton OH
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[Morten Loegstrup]

Hi Kevin

Thanks for your question. 

There is a lot of elements that your AX and Management team have to consider before deciding on a move to either AX2012 R3 or D365. I work for a partner in southern California and we have serval discussions with food production companies about how they can move directly to D365, because it gives the company all the cloud benefits and they don’t need to invest in expensive new hardware for an AX2012 R3 upgrade.

In some cases we have conversations about how they can go to AX2012 R3 and then upgrade to D365 over a 2-3 year period. It all depends on your current environment if it make sense to stay 2 more years before moving to D365. Generally speaking the most beneficial is to upgrade directly to D365.

Moving to D365 pros: 

• No server maintenance, no downtown, no lost productivity etc.
• Automatically backup, integrated CRM, premium customer experience
• You stay compliant and current because all SQL, Windows and Office licensing and updates are included in D365
• You organization can make smarter decisions because of all the new functionalities, PowerBI etc.
• You can drive rapid growth – “61% of businesses reported benefitting from greater scalability in the cloud”
• Your system will stay secure – “running outdated versions are nearly 3X more likely to experience breach”
• A more modern ERP can decrease operating costs by 20-30%
• 40% discount on subscriptions if you upgrade to D365   

Cons: 

• It requires training of existing AX users (not really a negative thing)
• Your organization will have to work with new functionalities and adapt to new work patterns 

To give you a better answer we need to ask some additional questions about your current environment before we can give you the best advise on what to do.

If you would like to see a video about the 3 upgrading paths, then I check this out How to upgrade from Microsoft Dynamics AX to Dynamics 365 Finance & Operation?

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Morten Loegstrup
San Diego CA
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[Zvika Rimalt]

Morten,

I thought I was told Microsoft no longer sells Dynamics AX 2012 licenses as of last year.
Is it still even an option to upgrade to AX 2012?

Zvika

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Zvika Rimalt
Functional Consultant
Vancouver BC
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[Paul Martin]

?My understanding is that you can not, however if you already have 2012 you can still buy licenses.

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Paul Martin
Production Program Manager
Elite Comfort Solutions, LLC
Rutherfordton NC
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[Zvika Rimalt]

Kevin –

I can think about 2 reasons for you to consider going to AX2012 (if indeed it is actually possible…)

1. Your company does not want a cloud solution.

2. You are using some 3rd party add-on that has not been upgrades (yet?) to work with D365.

otherwise it is hard to imagine a reason to implement a version that will be going out of support from Microsoft not long after you finish the implementation.
I am not aware of any factor that would make re-implementing with AX2012 any easier and faster than re-implementing with D365.

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Zvika Rimalt
Functional Consultant
Vancouver BC
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[Frank Potter]

?Hi Kevin,
we’re on AX 2012 R3 and not AX 2009 so just a few thoughts, licensing will probably drive you to D365 anyway but here’s some other items which I think would drive you to D365:
1) R3 and D365 share the same data model base (vastly different to AX 2009) so your migration to R3 or D365 will probably incur similar effort from a data perspective.
2) Although Microsoft encourage companies to run D365 in the cloud you do have the option to run it on prem if you desire.
3) New functionality and bug fixes are always applied by Microsoft to D365 first. They then choose to back port some fixes to R3. You can expect that Microsoft will gradually decrease changes to R3. I would go where Microsoft is investing most of their $.
4) If you have customizations you’re going to have to bite the bullet and re-write them whether you go R3 or D365. Since D365 uses Extensions I would re-write any customizations for the D365 world and not R3.

#AX2009
#UnifiedOperations
??

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Frank Potter
ERP Business Process Lead
Kodak Alaris Inc.
Rochester NY
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[Colby Gallagher]

All – This is a really old post by Kevin that was bumped up by a partner trying to drum up business. Zvika is correct, no one can sell licenses to AX 2012 R3 anymore.  If you are on AX 2012 you can upgrade to R3, but there is no path from 2009 to R3 anymore.

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Colby Gallagher
Manufacturing Systems Consultant
Agility Business Solutions
Brecksville OH
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