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Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement On-Premises

Online vs. On-Premises

It’s an age-old debate. Used to be that on-premises was the only way to go; and the Internet-Facing Deployment (IFD) made it a lot like a cloud-based application. The only question was: who was doing the hosting? Hosting the CRM application has progressed from self-hosted in your own data center, to partner-hosted, to online. Microsoft is the 800-pound gorilla when it comes to hosting applications, and Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement was practically born in the cloud.

But, we know, as long-time Dynamics CRM partners dating back to 2004 and CRM 1.2 — there’s been a lot of companies that deployed CRM locally on their own network. And for various reasons, some of those folks have continued to maintain the self-hosted deployment model.

Perpetual Licenses

When you bought Dynamics CRM licensing, chances are you bought a perpetual license with Software Assurance. This granted you the right to upgrade the software to the latest version as long as you kept the Software Assurance up to date.

Oftentimes, over the years, various third-party solutions were installed, and customizations were made. Upgrading became difficult. Migrating to the cloud also presents problems for some companies.

One obvious problem is the pricing, since the perpetual licenses are already paid for, why would you now want to start paying a subscription fee for the online version.

On-Premises Database

The good news about self-hosting Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Engagement (CRM) on-premises is that you have direct access to the SQL database. The bad news is that you also will be responsible for maintaining that database. And besides database performance, you also have to maintain the database server, which has its own hardware and software licensing costs.

Maintenance, Upgrades, and Migrations

We at SyncraTec Solutions, have lived through the evolution. And we can even talk to you about all the possible licensing options now available, and some of the very cool back-end services that make the Power Platform an attractive proposition if you’re considering moving to the cloud. If you want to move the cloud, we can help with the migration. There’s also licensing available now (as of October, 2019) that provides a 40% discount on subscription licensing if you’re moving from perpetual licenses currently with Software Assurance.

If you’re happy where you are, we can help with maintenance and upgrades. We can help you implement the new features, and explain the difference between what’s available online vs. on-premises.

If you’re system is getting slower every year, if your servers are nearing end-of-support, or if your database is taking up too much space. Just let us know, and we’ll see what we can do to help.

How can we help?
