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[Adam Jacobson]

Good morning,
My client, Nathan’s Famous, is looking for different hosting and NAV support options.  They are currently hosted with a partner with the contract scheduled to end this year.

They have several key modifications which will need to remain.
There is no internal IT staff with NAV technical knowledge. 

As I understand it, we have three routes to take:
1)  Install the software on Premise and have a partner maintain it.
Being on premise would avoid certain issues we’ve had with integration to Email and Jet Reports

2)  Choose a dedicated NaV host.    We’ve found a few dedicated NAV hosts–Outeredge and rose ASP.  Wondering if there are others 

3)  Have a partner maintain a generic host for us (Azure, AWS).

We’ve started sending out our RFI but we’re looking for recommendations and experiences people have had with the different routes.
Adam

 

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Adam Jacobson
President
Red Three Consulting, Inc.
Bronx NY
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[Kris Ruyeras]

Hi Adam,

I have actually implemented quite a few hosted environments from NAV, QuickBooks, SAP, and other ERP solutions. Depending on where you are hosting it, who the provider is, their capability and customer needs, a hosted environment can be very flexible.

You can setup Site-to-Site VPN if they want to do DirSync with their Active Directory and other Microsoft products. Do they have local server as well for storage? Or they can have the entire infrastructure hosted and use RDWeb or RemoteApp.

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Kristoffer Ruyeras
Director of Business Technology
Seattle, WA
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[Ben Baxter]

NAVUG is not supposed to be used as a marketing platform for partners, so I’m hoping this topic stays informational.

Any NAV partner has the following options when working with a client who prefers a cloud environment:

1. Internally hosted server environment, where the partner maintains the “cloud”.
2. Externally hosted server environment, which comes with two paths:
   1. Utilize a generic cloud platform (Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, etc.); lots of options big and small, global or local.
   2. Utilize a Dynamics cloud platform (SaaSplaza, 1ClickFactory, RoseASP, etc.); which may be on their farm, may be on Azure, etc.
3. Go On-Premise

2.1 Means either the client or the partner need to have some level of experience setting up the cloud and maintaining it.
2.2 Means the partner has someone to lean on for experience/support maintaining the cloud environment.

Regarding the cloud, regardless of the option selected, the environment itself is the most important part.  Getting the resource sizing correct, and ensuring the proper fail over procedures are in place matters more than the name on the cloud.  There is some inherent trust that Microsoft and Amazon have stronger systems, but anyone on AWS knows that they can have outages as well.

In terms of your NAV partner, if a switch is required, find someone for your industry.  The cloud knowledge can be by-passed by utilizing option 2.2.  Base your decision on their ability to support your client’s needs.  A NAV partner is software support and consulting first, and a hardware/cloud support second, if it all.

Good luck in your search!

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Ben Baxter
Consultant
Accent Software, Inc.
Carmel IN
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[Adam Jacobson]

I think I understand the basics of what’s possible (although I do appreciate the additional names).
I’m looking more for recommendations of what people are doing and how it’s working for them.
I hope that’s appropriate for the list.

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Adam Jacobson
President
Red Three Consulting, Inc.
Bronx NY
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[Michael Carr]

Adam , the on premise and generic services ( AWS, Azure, etc) generally ate going to require the same level of technical competence in running a Sql Server. If the client can handle it on one generally they can handle it on the other. IF there is no networking and server maintenance skills. That will remain the deciding factor , NAV expertise is less relevant —IMHO. 

Dedicated host providers are probably  better if you lack the in-house expertise to run a server.

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Michael Carr
VP , Finance
Philadelphia Scientific LLC
Montgomeryville PA
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[Gregory Alford]

We have struggled with the same options discussed in this thread. 

We currently are hosted on a local provider that forces us to use Citrix to connect to their servers. Citrix has issues with locking up, printing and working with Office 365 in the hosted environment. This made us leery to continue with the hosting world.

We just purchased a server and we are doing a technical upgrade to 2018 as we migrate off the hosted server. We will then start an in place upgrade to extensions. That should take a few years. We have VMWARE servers setup for a Domain Controller, File and Print Server, NAV, SQL Server, and 4 RDS Servers. Lots of disk space, and lots of memory. NAV, SQL Server and our NAV data are running on SSD Drives.  By the way, if you use ZetaDocs you have to upgrade to version 10 and we are having our challenges with that. We are going to try to use RDS servers for the clients. We use ZetaDocs to store documents in Office 365 SharePoint in the cloud. Right now we can’t start testing the upgrade until ZetaDocs is working (constant error messages right now). If all goes well, we will use RDS, otherwise we will do client installs on everyone’s PC. 

We have four buildings around the country so out ultimate plan is to move to a private cloud hosting center. Right now, each building is serviced by a separate internet provider. We have now synched up all the contracts and at the end of 2019 we will award a contract to a single provider. As soon as that is complete, we will move our servers to a hosting center. We will then have only a firewall and switches in each building (plus any equipment the internet provider installs).

I should also mention that we have a Managed Services company that takes care of our network and servers. They are handling much of this work for us.

Our frustrations with everyone pointing fingers led us to this solution. We are experiencing a lot of pain making these moves. In the long run, we think our solution will provide a stable environment with only a Managed Services company and an Internet Provider to deal with.

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Gregory Alford
ERP Manager
Tri Star Metals LLC
Carol Stream IL
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[Gregory Alford]

As a follow up – we did get Zeta Docs working. RDS appears to have some issues. Sending an E-mail locks everything until the E-mail is sent (Office 365 E3). You have to minimize E-mail and the maximize E-mail or you click right through on whatever is behind the E-mail. Drag and Drop does not work with Zeta Docs. An additional interface appears when working with Zeta Docs.

It looks like we will be installing the client on our local machines.

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Gregory Alford
ERP Manager
Tri Star Metals LLC
Carol Stream IL
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[Mitch Brown]

Hi Gregory,

My name is Mitch Brown, and I work for Equisys the developers of Zetadocs. Do you have time for a call this week to discuss the issues you are experiencing in more detail?

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Mitchell Brown
Channel Manager
Equisys
Alpharetta GA
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[Kim Dallefeld]

I’m an on-premise promoter but I recently setup a hosted NAV 2017 using the SAAS model and I hate it. The user interface is so lacking compared to on-premise.  I’m not very technical here but from a user interface, I’ll recommend on-premise always.

I’m interested to see if anyone has had better experiences.

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Kim Dallefeld
VP Professional Services
Syte Consulting Group
kdallefeld@sytecg.com

Past NAVUG Board Chairman
NAVUG Programming Committee
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[Ron Ketterling]

You can run the desktop client with most cloud implementations. This is true going back to at least 2009R2. We do it all the time. Your partner should be able to help you.

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Ron Ketterling
President
Business Automation Specialists of MN, Inc.
Minneapolis MN
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[Eduardo Diaz]

We moved from on-premise to a private cloud in Azure during our NAV2016 migration. We have NAV, SQL and Remote Desktop servers in Azure. All users in our main office use the NAV Client. We used ClickOnce to push the NAV client plus all add-ins in one easy install. Remote users access NAV via the Remote Desktop. Azure has allowed us to scale as needed. For end users, the experience is the same. For IT, I no longer have to manage hardware or buy bigger servers. If possible, create a testing environment and try it. Cheers

Note: Forgot to mention that we use Zetadocs Express with SharePoint Online and it works fine.

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Eduardo Diaz
IT Director
Minequip Corp.
Miami FL
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[Jeffrey Mantz]

Eduardo,

You had stated:
All users in our main office use the NAV Client. We used ClickOnce to push the NAV client plus all add-ins in one easy install. Remote users access NAV via the Remote Desktop. 

Did you set it up this way because the main office has a site-to-site vpn with Azure and you do not want users to have to create a VPN to Azure? Or was there some other reason the remote users cannot use a locally installed client?

We are hosting our own setup, but I am weighing the pro’s and cons of having our remote users use an RDP session over VPN vs just having the client installed on their local machine and connecting over VPN.

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Jeffrey Mantz
Zefon International
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[Eduardo Diaz]

Hi ,

Yes, we created a site-to-site VPN connection from our main office to Azure. For our satellite users, they connect via Remote Desktop which was faster than having the client installed locally and using VPN, or using Remote Apps. Note that we use Zetadocs Express and attaching documents from the Remote Desktop was a lot easier and faster than from their desktop. Hope this helps.

Cheers,?

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Eduardo Diaz
IT Director
Minequip Corp.
Miami FL
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[Ron Ketterling]

Are the RDP users getting their email on the RDP or on their local desktop?  If the local desktop, how do they drag and drop documents to Zetadocs?

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Ron Ketterling
President
Business Automation Specialists of MN, Inc.
Minneapolis MN
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[Ron Ketterling]

One thing to note – an RDP session is preferable to a desktop client if you are using Jet Reports across a VPN because Jet will download all the data to the desktop for processing.

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Ron Ketterling
President
Business Automation Specialists of MN, Inc.
Minneapolis MN
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[Kris Ruyeras]

In addition to other setups, you can have it configured via RADC (RemoteApp) which creates ‘icons’ on your desktop as it looks like it’s installed on the user’s desktop. This can be pushed via GPO.
Application will look like it’s installed local to their machine and full functionality as if you’re using NAV locally.

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Kristoffer Ruyeras
Director of Business Technology
Seattle, WA
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[Gregory Alford]

Oh it gets better. Today we went live on our Technical Upgrade to 2018. It turns out that the Drag and Drop feature does not work for the 64 bit client unless we buy the E-mailing license to everyone. Our developer will be trying to switch us over to the 32 bit client. Isn’t upgrading fun?

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Gregory Alford
ERP Manager
Tri Star Metals LLC
Carol Stream IL
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[Ron Ketterling]

Consider Insightworks drag and drop add-on. It’s free. I have no idea if you could convert existing docs.

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Ron Ketterling
President
Business Automation Specialists of MN, Inc.
Minneapolis MN
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[Mark Miranda]

Hi Gregory,

Which version of Zetadocs did you implement in your upgrade?   Zetadocs 10 no longer requires the 32-bit version of the client.

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Mark Miranda
Director of Information Technology
Western Computer
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[Ian Ray]

Hi,

I’ve had experiences with two flavors of this: Azure and 100% managed.

From a usability perspective, the snappiness of either route is going to be a matter of network performance, distance, and computing power. The standard Windows client can be used, it is just a matter of installing the correct certificate on clients and using the correct .config files.

As far as boosting performance, I have seen the magic of “cloud” here… when the performance does lag for some reason, the instant solution is easy: money. For on-premises, there is the additional complication of actually installing/upgrading equipment.

One variable where your mileage may vary is what a managed provider’s policy is on pushing custom code modifications. I have seen cases where it is just like Azure: do what you want. I have also seen cases where there was a strict policy on vetting modifications that incurred additional administrative time. The additional vetting wouldn’t be present if one was hosting their own Azure instances or hosting on-premises.

Another policy issue is access to the development environment. With a self-managed Azure instance, you can go ahead and use the dev environment to add fields, etc. With a 100% managed environment, you may have to pay every time a field needs to be added and objects recompiled as well as paying the managed provider to log in and do it. Like customizations, this varies by provider.

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Ian Ray
Cypress Grove
Arcata CA
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[Gregory Alford]

Hi Ron – Insightworks looks interesting, but does not work with SharePoint. Our Quality System requires us to use SharePoint so that we have granular control of document security.

Hi Mark – I am not sure how the licensing for Zetadocs works. When we originally bought it, we needed the ability to send copies of shipping documents to multiples recipients at the customer. We bought 5 licenses of Zetadocs Delivery. To our surprise and pleasure, we had drag and drop capability. However, the hosting company we were using would only allow us to connect through Citrix. Citrix did not allow us to use Drag and Drop. For our users, it was like dangling candy in front of a baby. The Fact Box showed drag and drop, but it never worked (except for me when I worked on the server). Now we have purchased our own server and completed a technical upgrade to 2018. Again, Zetadocs did not work with the Remote Desktop application or the 64-bit version of the NAV client. We installed the 32-bit client of the NAV client and the users now have drag and drop.

We have 4 buildings around the country and each is serviced by a different Internet Service Provider. As renewals have come up, we have adjusted the contract period for each one so that they will all end on January 1st of 2020. In about 16 months we will contract with a single ISP to provide service to all buildings so that we can implement an SD WAN. At that time, we will move all our servers into a private cloud at local hosting facility. We will then have one provider for internet and phone, one provider for NAV, a Hosting Company, and a Managed Service Provider. At that point, we are hoping that all the finger pointing stops and we achieve consistent and reliable phone service, network and IT support.

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Gregory Alford
ERP Manager
Tri Star Metals LLC
Carol Stream IL
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[Ron Ketterling]

We have a client on 2016 (upgraded from 2013 R2) with 15 locations on a VPN and 15 locations. Drag and drop works, but the speed of the Internet connection can cause slow upload speeds from some of the locations. Their Zetadocs data is growing at a projected rate of 25 GB this year.

We are using the 64bit client at at least one client (version 9?). It throws an error each time looking for the 32 bit dll, but still uploads the file. They have cleaned up the code in V10 to eliminate the error.

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Ron Ketterling
President
Business Automation Specialists of MN, Inc.
Minneapolis MN
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[Gregory Alford]

We were told that we had to use version 10 of Zetadocs with NAV 2018.

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Gregory Alford
ERP Manager
Tri Star Metals LLC
Carol Stream IL
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[Ron Ketterling]

A note regarding Zetadocs, I understand that they now require a maintenance contract to provide support, even if you have a grandfathered free license. This can be fairly expensive if you have a large number of users.

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Ron Ketterling
President
Business Automation Specialists of MN, Inc.
Minneapolis MN
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[Gregory Alford]

Tell me about it. They just sent me an invoice $4000.00. We are fighting for a discount.

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Gregory Alford
ERP Manager
Tri Star Metals LLC
Carol Stream IL
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