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Cloud Reportby Jeffrey Schwartz, Executive Editor
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Avanade Posts Microsoft ERP to Cloud
Fresh off Microsoft's announcement last week that the next version of its Dynamics AX enterprise resource planning (ERP) suite will be available as a hosted cloud service, systems integrator Avanade said it will do the same -- but customers don't have to wait.
Avanade, 80 percent of which is held by IT outsourcing firm Accenture with the remaining stake held by Microsoft, launched Cloud ERP at the annual Convergence conference that took place in Atlanta last week. Cloud ERP will work with the forthcoming version, Dynamics AX 2012, as well as the current release.
"We are seeing demand from our current clients for a cloud-based Software as a Service-type ERP provisioning around Dynamics," said Bernd Weidenmueller, VP of Dynamics AX at Avanade.
The service is available to companies with at least 40 employees but can scale up to the largest of Fortune 500 companies, Weidenmueller said. Avanade performs the customization of customers' applications and uses a third-party hosting company to host the application, Weidenmueller explained.
Genesis Casket Co., an Indianapolis-based startup manufacturer, is Avanade's first reference customer. The company needed an ERP solution and didn't want to develop or run it internally. "They were looking for a provider that can provide an ERP system with the strength of Dynamics AX but run in a Software as a Service delivery model which could scale up with their user growth with pricing attached to that," Weidenmueller said.
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on April 19, 2011