The future of Dynamics Ax seemed to take a big hit last year when the Dynamics 365 was launched. When Ax7 was launched for the cloud it was understood there would be an on premise version based on a private cloud which would run on the azure technology stack. That proved to be not so easy and a Microsoft Representative at a user group explained that there will be no on premise version and to get used to it.
The future, it seemed was that there will be some on premise components (manufacturing and retail) but on premise was dead.
Customers and partners immediately began shaking their heads in disapproval. We were particularly blunt in our views. The end message perceived by multiple people in the audience, was “to take it or leave it”. The fallout was instant and, a recent poll by Computer Futures showed that 40% of Microsoft Dynamics Operations customers stated they were going to leave if an on premise product wasn’t offered within the next 3 years.
Microsoft claims it listens and that it constantly seeks feedback. That after all is the basis of its agile development model. And it seems they really do with the recent announcement that an On-Premise version is coming in June.
The graphic below was published by Sri Srinivasan on the week of 2/20/2017. The expectation now is that Dynamics 365 for Operations will be generally available on premise in June 2017.
Dynamics 365 for Operations is already available in the cloud and offers added advantage of Microsoft’s intelligence capabilities of embedded analytics, machine learning, or working with the IoT stack.
However for many companies who have already heavily invested in infrastructure, or who unreliable internet connections, or who have business needs to hold data locally those benefits do not outweigh the need to store their company’s critical data locally. Consider a continuous process manufacturing facility, or a lean manufacturing automotive supplier with swinging penalties if the production line is stopped and where workers need to keep the production line humming 24 x7 and avoid production delays, especially. Industries rely on expensive machines to produce goods; these machines are highly automated, working on inputs from the ERP systems thye provide critical output signals that are used for overall management of the production facility. In such scenarios, it is desirable to run these processes locally while leveraging the power of the cloud to maximize efficiency. Also, some geographies require that transactions and personal information be captured and stored locally. other factors that may are apply are when :
• Your company’s leadership holds a non-discretionary attitude towards cloud computing
• Your business model needs control of your: data, data residency, and data isolation
• Your business information needs permanent connectivity
• The business processes require the ability to customize the service infrastructure of the ERP system to meet specific business needs such as scalability
• Your company has recently invested in data center resources
• Your industry’s regulations do not permit data be stored in the cloud
• Your country or geographic area has connectivity limitations
The on-premise deployment option is referred to by Microsoft as, “local business data.” Local business data will run your business processes on-premises, and will support local transactions and storage of business data, without replication of that business data to the cloud. The update of business data in the cloud is simply switched off.
For this “local business data” deployment scenario, the application servers and SQL database will run in the customer’s own data center ( or could be hosted in a private cloud).
Customers and partners will still be able manage the application lifecycle through Life Cycle Services (LCS) in the Microsoft Cloud, including designing the business processes, creating and deploying the software image to deploy onto the on-premises nodes, monitoring the on-premises nodes in a system health dashboard, and keeping up with innovation from Microsoft.
Should your views change and your company later wants to utilize Dynamics 365 for Operations cloud capabilities then you can turn ON data synchronization to the cloud. Please note: the on-premise data will not benefit from Microsoft’s intelligent cloud capabilities like Power BI, AI, or other capabilities available to cloud subscribers.
So :
• New and existing customers will be able to license both local business data, and cloud and edge deployments.
• Customers can license local business data deployments via a Dynamics 365 for Operations license with Software Assurance/Enhancement Plan or a subscription model
• Customers with active Microsoft Dynamics Enhancement Plans or Software Assurance, may upgrade to local business data and remain entitled to access new versions and updates
• Transitions to Dynamics 365 cloud subscriptions are available to customers with active Microsoft Dynamics Enhancement Plans or Software Assurance
• Cloud and edge software and services will be licensed under the existing Dynamics 365 cloud subscription licensing model
We like the cloud for first time ERP implementations that are small or ones that have just a few people using AX/Operations. Its also suitable for companies who have limited integrations/customisations.
If you are an enterprise system with multi geographical units then you will come under different statutory regimes for taxes and payroll and each country’s economic budget may requite you to make system updates that cannot wait 8 hours or more for Microsoft to move.
For complicated manufacturing implementations, major companies with lots of licenses, or rapidly growing companies that are increasing their market share the current Ax 2012 on premise, or the on premise hybrid when it comes out, is for now a more pragmatic option. Uptime, system tuning when slow or unresponsive, minimizing downtime and scheduling it at your own convenience, dedicated support. plus the need for faster code moves and fast support response times are critical factors that need rapid access to the production server not currently possible on the cloud.
Expect a lot more details to emerge on this topic at the D365 Technical Conference in Seattle next Month and at the AXUG meet in Amsterdam early April.
Synergy will be at the AXpact CEO meeting the day before to meet with Chandru Shankar, Microsoft’s Manufacturing Industry Director, Sri Srinivasan, General Manager for Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations in the Cloud and Enterprise Group, and Mike Ehrenberg, Microsoft Technical Fellow to get more insight.
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