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[Christine Laganson]

We are on AX 2012 R3 and plan to move onto D365 this year. We are strongly leaning toward an on prem installation. I’m looking for input from those that have an on prem installation – are you happy you went that route, what limitations have you found, etc.

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Christine Laganson
Stafast Products Inc.
Painesville OH
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[Juan Sebastian Grijalba]

Hello,

In my experience one of the major drawbacks for the on-prem installation is that it is harder or not possible to use PowerBI embedded with the on-prem solution. 
also the use of the CDS or extending the system capabilities using the power platform is harder or not possible with the on-prem solution.  You ll notice that some of the features might not be available for the on-prem solution

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Juan Sebastian Grijalba
Berkowitz Pollack Brant
Miami
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[Denis Macchinetti]

Hi,

hope it help

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/fin-ops-core/fin-ops/get-started/cloud-prem-comparison

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Denis Macchinetti
AX Technical & Solution Architect
Deloitte Consulting
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[Zvika Rimalt]

I will suggest my personal opinion which is from a business perspective and not from a technical perspective 🙂

My impression is that Microsoft does not really want to sell non-Azure ERP
They seem to have been strong armed into offering the on-prem option, following a lot of contention in the user community.

If I were to consider implementing on-prem I would have been concerned about whether wanted to invest in a product (D365 on prem) where the product maker themselves is eager to disown.

my 2 cents…

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Zvika Rimalt
Functional Consultant
Vancouver BC
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[Rahul Mohta]

Sharing one my old blog
https://community.dynamics.com/ax/b/happyd365fo/posts/compare-cloud-and-on-premise-local-business-data-salient-features-in-microsoft-dynamic-365-finance-and-operations-one-version

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Regards
Rahul Mohta
Advisor – D365FO
Real Dynamics
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[Brad Bertchie]

I had a previous project thas was on-prem.  It was not a pleasant experience.

From missing functionality to general instability, it was a constant battle to attempt to stabilize the environment.

There are many other ways to cut costs.  Bringing this in house is not one of them.

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Brad Bertchie
Senior Consultant
Western Computer
Oxnard CA
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[Christopher Kean]

Thanks to the previous posters for some helpful comparison links. We’re looking at the same question, and I wanted to see what insight everyone had concerning uptime and reliability. We’re a 24/7 manufacturing facility, currently reporting more or less directly into on-prem AX 2012 R3, so having the D365 environment unreachable for an extended period of time would be rough. I know experiences will vary based on local ISPs and whatnot, but how reliable is the cloud-hosted version? Any real extended outages that have impacted you? Have you had to take extra steps to prepare for an outage, like converting any custom application interfaces to handle D365 being unreachable (offline local data storage), or extra documentation for production during an outage?

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ChristopherKean
Superior Aluminum Alloys
New HavenIN
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[Denis Macchinetti]

In my opinion the topic require more deeply understanding according to the Business, integration complexity and budget.

The last mine 10 projects was mixed On Prem and Cloud.

As of today, I can’t say the Cloud is better than On Prem.
For sure, SAAS is the future.

We need for sure invest a lot on the Integration part and agree with Christopher, manage a sort of offline mode where is required.
The last one also for handle the customizationupdate deployments with a low business impact.

Lastly, in some cases, an On Prem project could be less expensive because we can at the first level reuse the current hardware, but especially some integration part and internal skills, if present.

In a second stage, we can move to the Cloud and re-engineer the Integration layer.

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Denis Macchinetti
AX Technical & Solution Architect
Deloitte Consulting
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[Rahul Mohta]

+1 Dennis

Evaluation criteria to consider if there are connections expected with low bandwith/latency to go for on-prem
24/7 is no problem for cloud in fact it is best

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Regards
Rahul Mohta
Partner – D365FO
Real Dynamics
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[Duane Jenkin]

Greetings from New Zealand

If you have a 24/7 manufacturing facility then you will need to consider the impact on upgrades and patches. Microsoft allow you to pick a three hours window but if you are 24/7 or operate in multiple time zones then you want to make sure you are gong into the project with your eyes open. I understand people are being helpful with links to comparisons and this is a good place to start but if you are upgrading from an earlier version then they can be regarded as marketing tools and don’t give enough detail to determine what exactly you can a can’t do at a technical level for your specific business. The best thing you can do get get a trial system up and running and see for yourself. Manufacturing added a layer of complexity for us as it is easy to import Sales and Purchase orders but productions are more difficult. If your production time is short then you can finish productions in your current system but if you need to import/replicate them it, especially if you are Marking purchase orders this gets a little complicated.

There will be pain but as per an earlier reply, SAAS is the future, but the change may not be painless.

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Duane Jenkin
Business Analyst
Tourism Holdings Limited
Hamilton, New Zealand
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[Marcy Ashley-Selleck]

Hi Denis and Duane,
There are some valid issues being raised here.  The cloud (Microsoft’s, Amazon’s, Google’s, and others) is exactly that–Microsoft’s, Amazon’s, and Google’s.  The cloud is just someone else’s computer.  SaaS is a current option; not an inevitable future.  It’s a choice.  I like seeing here that people are making the choice thoughtfully and with concern as to how they are spending their organization’s money.  It is more important now than ever to be careful.

Just my thoughts,
Marcy

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Marcy Ashley-Selleck
Lead Platform Engineer
Dealer.com
Burlington VT
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[Rachel Thomas]

Just curious, what is making your company lean more towards on-prem vs. cloud? Are there specific concerns?

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Rachel Thomas
Sunrise Technologies
Winston-Salem NC
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[Christine Laganson]

There are two driving forces which are causing us to think keeping it on-prem ?is more desirable .One is the cost. We have not jumped on the subscription program bandwagon and I understand the proscons of it but it’s like buying your software again every year. If I add up the costs of our servers and how often we have to upgrade or replace them the cost savings doesn’t even come close. The 2nd reason being that we have in-house programmers and we have highly customized AX 2012 R3. We are used to having the db to access and make changes to as needed. Giving that control away is concerning.

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Christine Laganson
Stafast Products Inc.
Painesville OH
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[Rachel Thomas]

Thanks for sharing! I would definitely speak to your implementation partner. As other people have said, SaaS is the way of the future and it is what Microsoft is pushing – I would be concerned about future support for on-prem and there are still upgrade incentives to be had going from on-prem to cloud. The other thing to consider (if you haven’t already) would be the licensing structure. Not only can you start with the bare minimum and then ramp up and down as needed for the business, but you can license at different levels of usage. You’re being charged for consumption, just like any other utility. Also, you get free access to all future upgrades, so no re-implementation down the line as the business changes. 

Losing control is a major barrier that I’ve heard from several people making the switch. The good news is, once you upgrade you may be able to do away with some, if not many, of those customizations which would bring down your TCO from a support and development perspective. You’ll still be able to support your own system and customize as needed, it’s just a bit different as it is an extension vs. an overlay. https://sunrise.co/blog/invasive-roots-code-overlays-vs-extensions-microsoft-dynamics-365/ this blog gets into that a bit more. 

As someone else also mentioned, whether you go on-prem or cloud (which, frankly, would be my recommendation) there’s no way it will be painless especially if you’re currently running something highly customized – but it’s the last implementation you’ll ever have to do, so there is a bright side! The best thing you can do is find a really good partner who will tell it to you straight and understands manufacturing.

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Rachel Thomas
Sunrise Technologies
Winston-Salem NC
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