Built for Speed: Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Boosts Performance by Up to 20 Times
In the world of enterprise resource planning (ERP), faster is better and size definitely matters. In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, we’ve made dramatic improvements to both speed and scale: functions run up to 20 times faster, and the system supports cutting-edge multiple-processor configurations and database sizes to meet the needs of even the most data-intensive operation. This means you can enjoy faster responses from your applications in your day-to-day work and support the advanced analytics required by retail and e-commerce, without investing in additional hardware or infrastructure.
Speed
We put a lot of effort into improving the performance of the application server in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. We achieved this through some changes to the programming model, which allow the native X++ application code to run in the Microsoft .NET–based environment. This detail may be most interesting to developers, but simply put, it makes the application run much, much faster than previous versions. In fact, we've clocked Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 at as much as 20 times faster than Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 for some tasks!
This means you’re able to run even complex reports and queries in real time, which would require you to wait for batch processes in most other ERP systems. We think everyone who touches the application will appreciate what these gains mean in terms of usability and productivity, and organizations will benefit from faster, more connected business processes.
Scale
Scale is also a major contributor to the performance of an ERP system. We’ve built Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 to scale up by taking advantage of the more powerful processors and server hardware available today. We also built the business management software to scale out by supporting larger databases and configurations with more server and processor hardware.
This has huge implications for customers in data-intensive or transaction-intensive industries. If your business conducts a lot of database operations and transactions, for example, in retail or e-commerce scenarios, you’ll appreciate the ability to store your data efficiently and perform analytical and BI operations against your massive datasets.
We’ve also done a lot of work on space optimization. The data compression capabilities of Microsoft SQL Server can significantly reduce the storage requirements of Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012. Combined with the virtualization technologies of the Windows platform—for both database and application servers—you can minimize your hardware requirements and reduce your storage costs dramatically, even in scenarios with huge back-end databases.
You CAN Have It both Ways
One of the things we hear from our customers is that they expect a certain tradeoff between rich features and functionality and the performance of the application. People have come to see the two as mutually exclusive, but with Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012, we’re happy to provide them with both.
As we’ve completed the Technology Adoption Program (TAP) and the beta programs with our early adopters and customers, it’s been gratifying to see people’s eyes light up when they see how fast the application truly is. People have been most surprised that the business management software is running in the same environment, without the need to buy additional hardware.
We’ve achieved some great things by keeping up with the technological advances through the entire Microsoft technology stack, including Microsoft .NET, SQL Server, and the Windows platform, and designing Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 to take full advantage of this world-class infrastructure.
Below a great interview with Sri Srinivasan, Principal Program Manager and Architect in the MS Dynamics AX R&D organisation, in which he articulates the scale and performance advances of MS Dynamics AX 2012:
Share Your Thoughts
How many of your business processes are slowed down while waiting for complex reports or batch processes to complete?
How have your data storage requirements increased over the past five years? Have your hardware budgets kept pace?
Comments
Anonymous
May 23, 2012
it's not true that ax2012 is 20 times faster than ax2009. ax2012 is 20 times SLOWER than ax2009 !Anonymous
June 13, 2012
AOS and code running on server may be faster but the AX Client/UI feels slower. I think that is very much that counts in productivity.Anonymous
October 24, 2012
The comment has been removedAnonymous
October 31, 2012
We are going from AX 4.0 to AX 2012. The Client and EP on 2012 is MUCH MUCH SLOWER!Anonymous
December 06, 2012
on base of what kind of tests does Microsoft says that ax 2012 is faster. because its not, its actually slower.Anonymous
February 18, 2013
We are going from AX 4.0 to AX 2012 R2. The Client and EP on 2012 is MUCH MUCH SLOWER to!Anonymous
March 31, 2013
the financial statement is very slower with 11 financial dimensión and 32 main accountAnonymous
April 24, 2013
Microsoft, please, take care of all these comments and identify the major issues about performance; what has been written here is real only in another planet, not earth; in the meanwhile make something to help poor partners consultants that everyday wake up having in mind customers words! Dont focalize on "flowers forms", but solve real customers and partners problems that is the real life, planet earth...Anonymous
September 17, 2013
I have yet to see the first AX2012 application running at an acceptable performance. Compared to each of the previous AX versions (2.5, 3, 4 and 2009) AX2012 has definitely the slowest client interface. All users get to see the 'processing' balloon dozens of times a day and the 'loading data' message stays on screen like what seems forever when running a report. Not a single customer who has upgraded from an earlier (faster) version is happy with the AX2012 performance even though all hardware and network sizing requirements are met. Who are you trying to fool here?Anonymous
October 16, 2013
DAX 2012 is the slowest ERP i've ever seen -_- DAX 2009 was fun to work and to extend it, But AX 2012 is a flop... It crashes while typeing in the X++ Editor, it crashes sometimes without any reason.. It's definitly slow. Greetings from an realy anoyed DeveloperAnonymous
October 21, 2013
The x++ editor is pain to use.. It hangs a lot, is unpredictable not to mention its full of clutter-the undocked windows are good but they all end up in the same window you can't use multiple monitors like you would with Visual Studio. We could seriously do with an update to make the UI more responsive too use async or whatever- feels like everything is running on a single thread..improve the morphx IDE please.Anonymous
February 09, 2014
ax2012 is very much slow other than any erpAnonymous
April 15, 2014
Echoing what others have said. Client / GUI performance in 2012 is diabolical. Transaction throughput may be 20 times faster, perhaps, but overall interaction is awful. I don't know what we see more of, the "Processing....." popup or the "Not responding" window caption! It really is dire.....Anonymous
May 28, 2014
We just begin our implantation, with an empty database, it's already slow. With 80 cores and 256Go for RAM... wondering what's happen... (AX2012 R2 Cu7, I look for solution to improve perf.)Anonymous
August 21, 2014
AX 2012, after upgade from AX4. Performance is so poor! It takes like a minute to create a Sales Header! even with a much superior Hardware, loads of memory, loads of CPU, RAID groups, SQL settings all set as recomended by performance blog. This is dangerous! Customers are all over us! And OMG! the "processing..." POPUP! Who's idea was that!!Anonymous
October 13, 2014
after upgrading from Ax-2009 to Ax-2012 the performance is very slow in spite of all the tuning of VM , Database, application, etc... its slower 40 times than AX-2009!Anonymous
November 26, 2014
In my company i am facing performance issue, we are using AX 2012 r2, it is very slow, can I have your email id or skype id, I need your help, we have 50gb ram and we have active users 30+ but very bad performance, I request you help on this or give us some inputs, My skype id is ncalebkiran my email id is ncalebkiran@gmail.com, kindly give us your email id or skype idAnonymous
February 10, 2015
sorry but it's slower! AX2009 was slower than 4.0 and 2012 is even slower as AX 2009. So im very qurius about the performance for AX 2015. Probably I have to take my easy chair to work :)Anonymous
March 24, 2015
The comment has been removedAnonymous
April 06, 2015
The comment has been removedAnonymous
August 02, 2015
The comment has been removedAnonymous
January 22, 2016
The Dynamics TEAM (whatever what this is supposed to be) porbably not reading these blog comments. And its probably tru that the whole operations are 20 times faster... however there's now 40+ times the amount of rows to fetch to get the same info so overall result is twice slower than before...