The company's plan to port its four Dynamics ERP lines to the Azure cloud platform will begin in the fourth quarter with the release of NAV 2013 and GP 2013, Microsoft said.

Also due in the fourth-quarter is the release of AX 2012 R2, an update that will include new BI (business intelligence) capabilities geared for the needs of individual users.

AX and Dynamics SL will also end up on Azure later on.

All Dynamics ERP products will continue to be available in on-premises form and through traditional hosting partners after the Azure launch. Microsoft expects there will still be a strong market for both scenarios, as well as hybrid deployments.

Several years ago, Microsoft aborted Project Green, an attempt to bring together its four ERP (enterprise resource planning) applications under a single codebase.