Microsoft has enabled customers to deploy their Microsoft Dynamics ERP on Microsoft’s Azure cloud, which relies on Microsoft Data Centers. This serves as another deployment option for customers alongside partner hosting.
What Are the Advantages?
Being a cloud service, it is needless to specify that Azure deployment offers the advantage of having ERP access from anywhere and from any device. Additionally, one may choose from amongst a desktop client, web client or SharePoint client.
Another mainstream advantage that can be availed by leveraging Microsoft Azure for Dynamics is the ability to merge on-premise environment with hosted cloud environments to meet optimal needs.
Further advantages are as follows:
Azure deployment is much more feasible for organizations in comparison to partner hosting.
Traditional hosting cannot equate the benefits in terms of data center economies of scale that come from deployment on an elastic cloud platform such as Azure. Therefore Microsoft is able to price Azure services at a cost that is much lower than what partners offer.
Azure deployment offers inexhaustible resources, far beyond partner hosting.
Azure offers customers inexhaustible resources whereas through partner hosting customers are dependent upon limited but dedicated resources which can be manually expanded to meet customer requirements but requires extensive planning to do so.
Azure deployment is available to wider range of customers globally as compared to partner hosting.
Azure is the right option for companies that have multiple centers of operations around the globe. This is because, unlike hosting partners, Microsoft Azure has worldwide data centers which allows Microsoft to facilitate the movement of customer systems and data between the data centers as required.
With Azure deployment, version upgrades are more convenient for customers.
In partner hosting, each customer’s upgrades need to be handled on an individual basis as is the case with on-premises software. On the other hand, Azure deployment offers a much easier approach whereby application management is much more disciplined and Microsoft rolls out new versions and upgrades, and patches to its customers.
Microsoft directly provides Azure deployment unlike partner hosting which involves service providers.
Customers have a higher degree of comfort in Azure deployment as Microsoft itself is providing the deployment; this means that the cloud services are backed by the Microsoft Brand and this comes with service level guarantees. On the other side, partner hosting is delivered by service providers who a mostly unknown.
Hosting Partners also stand to take advantage of Azure Deployment:
Contrary to the belief that Partners must have suffered since Microsoft introduced Azure, even with Azure deployment, partners hold an important position as they maintain customer relationships and deliver the services for implementation and ongoing support. The advantage for hosting partners is that with the Azure deployment option they are now relieved from the need to maintain data center infrastructure.