This is the third article in a four-part series Enavate has put together to help organizations currently using Microsoft Dynamics GP understand how and where they can get additional value out of their GP environment, whether that is for their existing version, for a potential upgrade to a newer version, or for moving to the latest platform, Microsoft Dynamics 365 BC.
The series includes the following topics:
On-Premises vs. the Cloud: Financial Implication
Most on-premises IT costs are committed upfront and don’t vary with demand. This means you’re committed to the fixed capacity you’ve purchased, buying for expected future demand and growth, resulting in under-utilizing capacity. In fact, most organizations that host their applications on-premises purchase capacity that accommodates their highest demand times. Often, this means purchasing a server or servers to ensure capacity for peak demand times.
The average total cost of ownership for an on-premises server is $1,476.31 per month. The costs include:
- Direct costs: Hardware, software, backup, redundancy, HVAC
- Indirect costs: IT salaries or 3rd party management costs
- Hidden costs: Lost productivity due to downtime or over provisioning
Yet, according to Gartner data, the average server is only utilized 30% of the time.
When you host your applications on the Cloud, you pay for the service as you consume it. Such a variable cost model allows you to be more agile and optimize your capacity and spend. With Microsoft Azure, you also have:
- Pay as you go and spot pricings to support elastic workloads
- Reserved instances with a lower price point to support static workloads
So, what is Microsoft Azure? Azure is not a product. It's a suite of over 200 different products and Cloud services. It is specifically designed for building, running and managing your applications across multiple Clouds, with the tools and frameworks of your choice. It is billed according to three services:
- Compute: The virtual machines, memory and CPU that provide the infrastructure needed to run applications and can run on Windows, Linux or SQL O/S. Compute capacity is billed by the second.
- Storage: Secure Cloud storage that protects your data infrastructures storage solutions (which could vary) or can be attached to other resources such as virtual machines. Storage is billed by gigabyte per month.
- Networking: Networking, or data transfer, allows connectivity between Cloud and on-premises infrastructure and services. You aren’t charged for inbound data transfer, but you pay a fee for outbound data transfer.
Microsoft Azure Security
Microsoft Azure is one of the most trusted Cloud platforms available. It has capabilities other Cloud providers don’t have the scale or bandwidth to provide, as Microsoft has about 3,500 security experts on Azure and spends $1 billion annually on Cloud security. They analyze over eight trillion events, such as attempts to access your environment, each day. And Microsoft Defender Advanced Threat Protection automatically mitigates around 95 percent of all detected endpoint attacks. That is why we offer real-time Azure cost predictions and optimizations, for which we examine your environment to be more cost- and use-efficient.
Around 95 percent of Fortune 100 companies use Microsoft Azure, as well as over 400,000 small and large companies across the world.
Azure Managed Services with Enavate
The Enavate Cloud is a fully managed Microsoft Azure environment provided by us at Enavate. It is an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) capable of hosting Microsoft Dynamics GP, NAV, SL and AX. Hosting GP in Azure with managed services has advantages for running the application, improving security, reducing dependency on local servers and more.
Enavate has a long history of supporting GP applications in the Cloud. We're highly skilled in connectivity, including implementing the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and Land Disaster Recovery as a Services (DRaaS). This results in cost savings for you as you look at leveraging of a Cloud. We don’t only host the application and infrastructure, we manage it 24 x 7 x 365, so you can focus on your business. We leverage our DRaaS skills to provide you with a secure environment, business continuity and redundancy. Furthermore, we ensure data backup, restore services, up to date real-time anti-virus, and anti-malware.
Our consultants are tried-and-true Microsoft Dynamics with innovative methodologies to help optimize your system performance. Further, with Enavate Cloud, you get more than the latest hardware and software, you also get:
- Visibility through a client portal so you can easily see current incidents, support statuses and other information about your environment.
- Guaranteed 99.95% uptime
- Ability to meet regulatory compliance challenges.
- Support for Windows server operating system administration.
- Auditable patching updates, with systems patched on a regular basis.
- Automation for management, security and windows updates
- 24x7 support for SQL server environment, including backups, optimization and performance tuning.
All of these benefits funnel into what we see as the most important aspect of working with Enavate, the improvement of the end user experience. Afterall, if new technology does not make life easier on your employees and processes, what is the point of implementing it? Enavate provides each client with a dedicated service delivery manager who is their single point of contact for issues related to their Cloud services, making a client’s manager an expert on their account. We also provide assistance with problem management, escalations, helping resolve outstanding issues, and identify problems – even before you encounter them. In addition to this assistance and expertise in your business processes, we pride ourselves on our training and offer quarterly reviews and workshops, for which we review open tickets and other issues, share trends and help with future planning.
Watch and learn more about hosting GP in Azure below:
The Next Step in Your GP Journey
What journey are you on with your Dynamics GP platform? Are you performing a health check or an upgrade? Do you want to host your GP environment in Azure? Or are you ready to fully migrate from GP to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central? Whichever your destination is, our team at Enavate has deep experience working with GP. Get in touch to learn more and get a free assessment of your Dynamics GP environment.
Read the next article in the series, Migrating from GP to BC.
