Microsoft Dynamics Technical Conference 2015

First of all - A Happy New Year!

I attended The AX Technical Conference last year and after following the progress of the upcoming Conference (Session Catalog), I have concluded that I can't justify the cost (attendance, travel, living and lost Income for my employeer) of attending this year. The main reasons are the lack of deep technical sessions (level 400) and the fact that the Conference now also covers CRM which is not on my agenda.

I found last years Conference to be "light" with regards to technical depth and coverage, but my expectations where based on what was called the Technical Briefing back in the days when Damgaard owned Axapta (some years ago - I know) and not the fact that AX 2012 R3 was a functional release. My latest experience before AXTech 2014, was Convergence in 2008 and even this conference (more customer oriented) was more technical compared to AXTech 2014.

I see the dilemma for Microsoft with the current product focus around added functionality (horizontally and vertically). The first event or conference covering AX 7 (AX 2016?) will be more interesting to me, since this release means a real architectural change (product revolution and a tehnological shift). At the time of writing this post (the first one in 2015), this is still unknown, and I don't expect AX 7 to be covered until the next Technical Conference in 2016. I wonder what Microsoft will name this conference when it again quailify for AX Technical Conference...

I have had my first looks at AX 7 CTP4 in Azure and I will probably post some information when the time allows it.

AX Technical Conference (#AXTech2014)

The Technical Conference is a major event in the AX Community and I'm scheduled to attend (thank you). It's been a while since I last attended a similar conference (I think it was Convergence in Copenhagen back in 2008) and after looking at the agenda and session catalogue, it seems to cover a lot of ground both from a functional and technical point of view.

The conference is called the AX Technical Conference, but it seems like Microsoft will cover the functional area. The focus is of cource AX 2012 R3 scheduled for RTM in Q2 2014 (CTP 4 right now). AX 2012 R3 seems to be a functional release incorporating the Warehouse and Transportation functionality bought from Blue Horseshoe (Industry focus) and improvements within the Retail area. In addition some technical news like the Deployment Tool for Azure. The latter is no supprise given the major focus on Azure which we also see in the Norwegian market (more in a later post togheter with some thoughts around the future).

So what do I expect? Well most of all this is a good opportunity to sit down and pay attention to the people closest to the product and an opportunity to interact with key resources. In addition I expect to go back to Norway next week with a better understanding of R3 and increased understanding of what we have ahead of us the next year. With the next major release of AX ("Rainier") beeing scheduled for release as soon as Q4 2014, I also expect some information related to this which probably will introduce some ground braking changes for the presentation layer in AX. All in all a good opportunity to slow down from the rather hectic daily schedule and fill up with valuable targeted and product specific information.

I'm not very into NFL, but I noticed that the Seattle Seahawks has reached the Super Bowl final and we will probably notice a little bit of interest around this event also...

I'm off to Seattle tomorrow (11 hour flight) and I will try to report the headlines from each day next week and give a final assesment based on my expectations when I return to Norway.