Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations may be a new name but it has been around for the last two decades. Finance and Operations, in the past, was known as Microsoft Dynamics AX and Axapta. It was originally developed by IBM and Danish company Damgard in 1998 and released with the name, IBM Axapta. Later Damgard bought out IBM and got exclusive rights for Axapta. In the year, 2000, Damgard merged with Navision and the product became Navision Axapta. Microsoft acquired Navision in 2002 and Navision became part of the Microsoft Business solution group. Navision Axapta was now called Microsoft Navision Axapta. In 2004, Microsoft released the first major version and renamed the product to Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0. Other releases under Microsoft are Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009 and AX 2012. In February 2016 Microsoft released the new cloud based modern version with the new name, Microsoft Dynamics AX, later renamed to Dynamics 365 Operations to get into the brand of Dynamics 365 and now called Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Enterprise edition.

The following diagram highlights the history of Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations, Enterprise edition over the last two decades:

The history of ERP products is important to understand the product growth in the past both in terms of functionality and implemented best practices. The history of Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations from the last two decades shows the story of growth from an ERP system for small businesses to a tier 1 ERP system for global enterprises.