When it comes to hosting Microsoft Dynamics GP, there are a number of options you can consider – some better than others. In the past, hosting options were limited to on-premises servers which can become costly quickly, from the initial capital expense of buying and provisioning hardware and software to ongoing maintenance costs. Not to mention the costs of security breaches and natural disasters.
Now, businesses have the option of hosting Dynamics GP in the Cloud. This could be with Microsoft Azure Cloud, Amazon AWS, or Google Cloud. Compared to on-premises servers, Cloud Hosting has many unique benefits from no upfront costs, ability to scale to any resource demand, and managed security and disaster recovery. Each cloud hosting option has it’s pros and cons. Here I will focus on the Microsoft Cloud and why it’s the ideal option when hosting Dynamics GP.
Gartner AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Scorecard ranks Microsoft Azure Cloud highest in meeting 95% of Gartner’s 236-point evaluation criteria for Cloud IaaS.
Reference Architecture
Having already made many deployments of Dynamics GP in the Microsoft Azure Cloud, we have proven reference architecture that is built for Azure. If there’s ever a problem, this allows us to quickly and easily compare your Dynamics GP deployment in the cloud to other Azure Deployments and usage statistics to identify and isolate the root cause.
With AWS or Google Cloud, the back-end administrative system and the lack of reference architecture creates difficulties in isolating issues and this can lead to significant downtime, system instability, and in extreme circumstances, complete data loss.
Minimize Ongoing Costs
Having your Dynamics GP and Cloud Hosting through Azure with a single Partner like 360 Visibility improves our time to resolution which translates to reduced hourly service costs. There are greater efficiencies and cost saving opportunities to be had when working with a single partner, like bundled discounts, and simplified Accounting functions for Accounts Payable when billing is consolidated under a single invoice.
When your Dynamics GP is in one place and hosting another, like on AWS or Google Cloud, it becomes difficult to get the correct level of access to the environment and hosting in a timely manner, which in turn leads to higher costs, longer downtime and slower resolution of issues.
Optimize Project Costs
When there’s an ongoing monthly component to the proposal for hosting and implementing Dynamics GP, we take that into account when determining the overall project costs. Essentially, having both your hosting and Dynamics GP through one Partner lets us be more aggressive in our pricing.
This doesn’t apply when purchasing and implementing hosting from a third party like AWS or Google Cloud because those services are not in our control. The end result is higher project costs and higher ongoing costs.
Smarter Support
Having a single vendor for both hosting and Dynamics GP enables us to better collaborate when diagnosing problems. If the application team asks for stats regarding the storage performance when running reports for example, there is a cohesiveness with the Azure Cloud team since they can easily work together.
If you Dynamics GP was hosted on AWS or Google Cloud, Microsoft is not able to obtain the same depth of back-end data that may be necessary to resolve your issues, which increases overall effort and costs.
Hosting Dynamics GP on Microsoft Azure Cloud with 360 Visibility
With Microsoft, Amazon, and Google providing everyone with DIY hosted infrastructure, you may be looking at raw costs of a hosted server compared to a fully managed, supported, and proven solution with 360. You’ll quickly find that the raw cost of a server is only a piece of what’s required and combining this with ongoing support, end-user experience, built on a Microsoft supported platform using referenced architecture, Dynamics GP in Azure with 360 Visibility is a fantastic solution. We are confident that you will experience better service, support and performance, with reduced costs over time.
We build reliable, secure and cohesive environments on a platform that provides possibilities for future integration with other services provided by Microsoft.
If you are hosting your Dynamics GP somewhere other than Microsoft Azure Cloud, or just want to know more about the services we provide, visit 360 Visibility or call (905) 907-3600. We’d love to help you take advantage of the benefits of working in a unified environment.
360 Visibility
