I could have posted this in the Dynamics 365 forum, but I’m looking for some feedback in the AX community, instead.
As most of you know, as of November 1st, 2016, Microsoft is switching their branding of Dynamics AX (or Dynamics AX Online or Dynamics AX 7) to Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Enterprise Operations App. While this abundance of words is confusing anyways, it’s additionally confusing because of the additional offerings in the non-enterprise space. In addition to Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Enterprise there’s also a Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Business. The “for Business” offering is intended for companies in the <250 employee ranges and the “for Enterprise” offering is for greater than that.
If I want to write a tweet, or a post, or have an in-person discussion with someone, the only way to be specific enough is to use the full name, which costs 52 characters. We need a way to shorten this, but still be accurate. I recently ran into an issue with some “for Business” folks on Twitter where I wasn’t specific enough and people started getting confused.
What do people think? Is the Kelly Kane-initiated #D3FO hashtag good enough? Does it need an “E” for the enterprise piece (#D3FEO)? Let me know what you think. I tried having this discussion on Twitter, but I kept running out of characters!
Unfortunately, i think the confusion is just going to get worse. I’ve seen marketing and branding from Microsoft themselves where the two different sets of apps (some for business and some for enterprise) are intermingled. This makes things complicated as you try to figure out if they’re talking about Sales app in business edition D365 or the Sales module of CRM in the enterprise edition. Going forward just calling it Dynamics 365 isn’t going to be enough.
Fortunately there is only 1 operations app. So in that instance [tag:D3FO] works. But really just if you’re talking a direct 1:1 replacement for referencing AX. There will be lots of customers that own all the D365 Enterprise edition apps through Plan 2, as an example. Those folks might need different tags for representing what they use, due to the fact that there is overlap between CRM and AX functionality. Some customers might use Sales Orders in the CRM/Sales app of the enterprise edition while others will want to use Sales Orders in the Operations app. Yes Yes, i know… Just say “common data model” 3 times fast and beetlejuice appears and moves your info between applications. But short of that, it’s still a nightmare to reference.
I know i’m just tossing a lot of complaints against the wall to see what sticks, but another issue I have is with the naming of AX as the “operations app”. I’ve been asked twice now if AX won’t have finance any longer due to so many references to the financials app. All of this separate marketing implies (to some new to our community) that its functionality is being broken apart. I’m sure those in the NAV space are going to be asked the same thing when their precious new “financials” used to be able to handle much more than finance.
As far as I know, the official name is Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations, not Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Enterprise Operations App. Nevertheless I’m going to call it Dynamics AX 7 for the time being and will wait if the marketing team manage to sort things out.
By the way, nobody is going to throw away the finance module in AX.
Yep I think that is the name. But for those customers who, say, are looking at using the “sales” app for D365 there will need to be a differentiation of Business vs. Enterprise. Continued along that line of thinking, Microsoft puts out marketing like is seen in this picture, and they don’t mention which apps are on the Business side or the Enterprise side, and it’s likely confusion will grow. I agree completely that no one is “throwing away” anything. It just adds that much more work to explain all of this to new customers, and could deter some customers when they see a slide like this clearly calling out financials as Maderia and operations as AX.
Ultimately, I completely agree with your sentiment Martin. There’s still a lot of dust to settle before I stop calling it AX.
What’s “accordingly”? Using just a single name wouldn’t be correct (e.g. somebody asking about AX 2012 isn’t talking about Dynamics 365) and including both (Dynamics AX and Dynamics 365 for Operations) looks quite long. Maybe using a shortened form?
Yes it’s not without challenges to make it in a way that is both easy for the users of AX and 365 for Operations. And not sure a shortened form would help much either. AX and D365FO Forums? Even if “community regulars” will know the [tag:D365FO] tax, then not sure normal users would.
I think the discussion on how to refer to D365 vs AX/CRM/NAV will go on for a while, until then, at least for now, let’s add the 365 for Operations to the group/forum descriptions.
