Take Your Business to the Cloud—On Your Terms
Updated: Jul 22, 2021
Insist on a business management solution that offers deployment flexibility and choice
Choosing a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central can be challenging, and deciding how to take advantage of the cloud adds another layer of complexity. Your decisions will have important consequences for your organization’s long-term growth and profitability, so it’s essential to choose wisely. To help you navigate the decision making process, we’ve created a 10-point checklist to identify some of the top factors to weigh when evaluating options for your business.
This week we’re looking at checklist item 2, the importance of choosing a business solution that lets you take advantage of the cloud in the way that best fits your specific situation.
Deployment Flexibility and Choice
Running some or all of your IT operations in the cloud—a form of “outsourcing”—gets plenty of attention these days because of its significant potential advantages:
Low start-up costs and short time to benefit.
Low initial hardware requirements, particularly interesting when capital is tight.
Simple software management and system administration, which can help trim the IT budget.
The ability to quickly scale IT capacity to fit sales swings or rapid growth, so that fixed expenses move to the variable column.
But running your ERP and other systems on-premises offers its own potential advantages, including greater flexibility for customization if needed; the ability to keep physical control of your data; and easier integration with other business software you’re already running.
Any new business solution you consider should help you take advantage of cloud computing, but in a way that supports the needs of your business. In your individual case, it may be appropriate to run some mission-critical applications on-premises, possibly for security or compliance reasons, while other applications are well-suited for the cloud. Even if you want to take your entire IT operation to the cloud, you may want to phase this in over time. So focus on a business solution that can accommodate your unique deployment requirements: on-premises, in the cloud, or a hybrid approach.
Let the Cloud Help Transform Your Business
With a business solution from Microsoft you have the flexibility to choose between on-premises deployment, a variety of cloud deployment offerings delivered through Solution Systems, or a blend of both. Our commitment to supporting ERP on your terms enables you to choose the deployment strategy that's right for your business today, and then move between those options as the future unfolds. Microsoft believes that the combined strength of our proven product capabilities and flexible deployment models deliver the capabilities you need to take your business forward.
