Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 and NAV 2013 products are now available for deployment on its Azure service.  It’s about time.

The launch, announced Tuesday, is giving customers another option for cloud-based ERP services besides NetSuite, SAP Business ByDesign, and others. It’s a bit late to the party.  Microsoft originally said it would be available last year.

The arrival of Dynamic on Azure continues to make Azure a more compelling platform than many originally thought.  What started as a PaaS-focused cloud, led to IaaS-type services, and now places SaaS-delivered applications on Azure as well.

Dynamics is well-regarded in the world of ERP, but far behind SAP in terms of number of implementations.  However, SAP is slow to get their cloud business up-and-running, and this could provide some much-needed initial traction for Microsoft.

The ERP market is slowly growing.  As enterprises view the success of SaaS players such as Salesforce.com, as well as consider the cost savings, all of the ERP players will count on their SaaS-delivered versions to provide the most revenue.  This changing model will be a fundamental shift in how this technology is consumed, as well as how sales of the technology are managed by the ERP providers.