Choosing a Dynamics
365 Deployment Type that is Right for your company
You have made the great decision
to implement Microsoft
Dynamics 365, What’s next? The question that needs to be answered is: What type
of deployment is right for your organization? You have a few options, each with
their own benefits. This decision needs to be weighed depending on your
business requirements and the infrastructure capacity of your organization.
Discussing your options with a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Partner, with extensive
experience, like Power Objects, will help you understand your options and their
impact on your team and infrastructure.
How to Choose a Deployment
Option for Dynamics 365?
There are 4 common deployment
methods for Microsoft Dynamics 365:
·
Online
·
On Premise
·
Partner Hosted
·
Hybrid Hosted
To start thinking about the best
deployment path for you, ask yourself some questions about your organization:
·
How quickly do you need your
Microsoft Dynamics 365 system up and running?
·
Does your IT Department have the
bandwidth to maintain additional hardware and software?
·
What types of external system
integrations and custom reporting does your business require?
There are some clear benefits to
each deployment type. You must evaluate the options and benefits for your
organization’s specific situation and requirements.
1. Dynamics
365 Online
Microsoft provides a subscription
based model of – Dynamics
365.
With this option, you are able to access Finance and Operations, Business
Central and CRM online via the cloud, without having to invest further in your
IT network hardware and software licensing. There is no local deployment of the
application and your users are able to access these applications from multiple
browsers. This access can be critical for remote or off-site staff who need
easy access.
Benefits of an Online deployment
include:
·
Ability to create a Dynamics 365
instance online and start using Dynamics 365 Applications (Finance and
Operation, Business Central, CRM) quickly – delivered as a Microsoft Cloud
service.
·
You only pay for the users and
the storage capacity that you need and add more as you need it – pay as you go!
·
Your users need remote access on
multiple browsers.
·
Microsoft performs daily backups
of your database.
·
Less investment towards internal
IT operations to maintain servers and client side applications.
·
Less investment on server
license fees.
·
Microsoft backed Service Level
Agreement (SLA).
·
Application upgrades by
Microsoft are included and you have the ability to upgrade when you prefer.
2. On-Premise
An on premise deployment of
Dynamics 365 allows you the fullest and most robust customization and
integration options. Dynamics 365 Applications are deployed within your network
and on your servers. You can choose whether or not to have an Internet Facing
Deployment (IFD) using ADFS. One of the key benefits of the on premise model is
that you have full control of and access to your data. You control your backup
frequency, you have access to the SQL database for custom SSRS reporting needs,
and you have the most extensive customization capabilities.
With an on premise deployment, you
are responsible for acquiring and maintaining the ongoing Microsoft licensing
required for both servers and users, as well as server and client side
hardware, application maintenance, and all upgrades and roll-ups.
Benefits of an On-Premise
deployment include:
·
You have full control of your
network and server configuration to support the application.
·
You have full control of your
daily backup process and the ability to pick a day and time to restore from,
should it be needed.
·
You have full access to your SQL
database for SSRS reporting needs.
·
The ability to customize Finance
and Operations, Business Central and CRM extensively, as needed for your
business process; unlimited system customizations.
3. Hosted
Power Objects and many other CSPs,
offers a Dynamics 365 hosting service. This allows you to pay a monthly fee per
user for CRM and Power Objects hosts your CRM on one of our servers and
maintains the licensing that is required. This is a great option for those
organizations that need the robust access that an on premise solution provides
– without taking on the ongoing server and client application maintenance. Power
Objects will keep things running for you!
This is similar in nature with the
online option except for the fact that, someone else is hosting and not
Microsoft.
Benefits of a Partner Hosted
Deployment:
·
All the access and control
provided by the on premise deployment model.
·
No additional IT burden for your
organization.
4. Hybrid
Hosted
Hybrid hosted is another option
that some organizations may choose. If you’ve already invested in the licensing
required for Dynamics 365 Application (Finance & Operations, Business
Central, CRM), we can still provide a hosted CRM solution that utilizes your
existing CRM licenses. To determine if this model is right for you, we
recommend you work with your CRM Partner to determine your options
My
Final Thoughts,
Options 1: Online, would be a good
one for any of your client(s), because of the leverage of Microsoft
having the regular(Daily) backups, up front security Measures, Platform and
Business Applications Updates, Integrations, patching and many others, but it’s
unfortunate that this has not yet reached our region. We can only continue to
ask our friends (Dynamics African) to communicate the expected dates. The
following are some of the critical down sides of the option as well, Restricted
Customizations, and this cannot be underestimated with our currently client
that required a ton of customizations. The other is Restricted Backend access
to Additional development and data, for example SQL.
In the same way Government and
other companies are strict on their Data sitting in the cloud hosted by “God
know Who” as a measure of Protection. However, this discussion is for another
day.
This option is called PARTNER
HOSTED
I therefore, would recommend that
we Stick on the On-premise option with an upgrade on purchasing Azure Space and
Hosting All our Client Databases there. This way we can still have full access
and control of all our Client Databases and Unrestricted Customization
Options. We can also, Leverage other tools like Power BI, Automate, Flows, and
Database Reporting tools, and Automated Backups to mimic Microsoft online
style.
Other Places like Windows Server,
Updates and Security will be taken care of by Microsoft, the Azure Service
Provider.
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