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Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations - Deployment options

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Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations - Deployment options

You can now deploy Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations in the cloud or on-premises. Cloud deployments offer a software system that is fully managed by Microsoft, while on-premises deployments as name suggests, are deployed locally within a customer’s data center.

Important: On-premises deployments of Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance and Operations are NOT supported on any public cloud infrastructure, including Azure.

The following table provides a comparison of the capabilities provided by the two deployment options.

Why cloud
Cloud deployments provide a cloud service that is easy to scale up or down as needed, as well as data centers that are fully managed by Microsoft. The time spent implementing Finance and Operations can be significantly shortened, fewer customizations may be required, and the costs of IT hardware and infrastructure are lower.

Cloud deployments include high availability, disaster recovery, sandbox environments, and application lifecycle management combined with cloud-based systems of intelligence, infrastructure, compute, and database services in a single offering. When needed, data failover in the cloud, automated deployment and continuous updates, and elastic compute capacity are available. A cloud deployment also provides data aggregation, financial reporting, and intelligence.

The cloud service provides customers with the greatest value, the broadest range of functionality, the best application lifecycle experience, the easiest and broadest integration with Microsoft Azure services, the best option for business insights and intelligence, and the most value for customers’ technology investments.

Why on-premises
With an on-premises deployment, existing data center investments can be leveraged. Customers can also configure their enterprise preferences to meet their needs.

  • The regulatory and compliance requirements of their business,
  • Comply with data sovereignty rules in regions where there are no Azure Data Centers, or
  • Ensure business continuity in areas with limited public infrastructure.

A customer’s business data and processes are disconnected from the cloud and are stored and run locally in the customer’s or their partner’s data center. Some connectivity is required for system management and updates which are enabled through Microsoft Dynamics Lifecycle Services (LCS), a cloud-based application lifecycle management service. Customer data that is related to the configuration and application customization may be stored in the cloud.

For customers who choose to run Finance and Operations in their own data center, the on-premises deployment option will have a similar user-interface and application functionality as other deployment options. However, customers must take on the following responsibilities:

  • Stand up their own infrastructure.
  • Configure their own high-availability and disaster recovery solutions.
  • Stand up sandbox environments.
  • Manage their infrastructure, including scheduling operating system updates.

The additional costs to deploy and manage these capabilities might lead to higher deployment costs and a greater Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). Tools for deploying the Finance and Operations software and updates will be available to partners and customers via Lifecycle Services. Unlike the cloud deployment option, Advanced Analytics and Azure Machine Learning services are not included in the on-premises deployment option. Talk to us regarding TCO comparison depending on your current and future state of your infrastructure.

Features not implemented in on-premises deployments
There are some features that have not yet been implemented and planned to be part of future releases. However, there are few features that are not intended for on-premise deployments.

Features not yet implemented
The following features have not yet been implemented in on-premises deployments. These features have not been deprecated. If these features are critical to your on-premises deployment, please let Microsoft know to help in prioritizing on the Dynamics 365 Application Ideas site.

Feature Description
Task recorder Task recorder libraries in Lifecycle Services (LCS) are not supported. Task recordings can be loaded from or saved to the local file system.
Support pane The Support pane (Help & Support>Support) is not yet available.
PowerBI.com integration PowerBI.com integration is not yet available for on-premises deployments. For example, the ability to pin a tile or a report from your PowerBI.com subscription to a workspace is not available.
Recurring integrations API The use of recurring data jobs through the recurring integrations API framework are not supported. You can only use the data management framework package API with on-premises deployments.
Microsoft Office integration SharePoint on-premises support is not yet available. SharePoint online is also not yet supported (due to an authentication issue).Skype for Business on-premises is not supported.
Electronic reporting (ER) integration with LCS The ER integration with LCS is not supported. ER configurations can't be downloaded directly from LCS to Finance and Operations.
ER integration with SharePoint Integration with SharePoint is not supported. SharePoint server can't be configured as a destination for electronic documents generated by using ER.
Author Power BI reports using OData Authoring Power BI reports with OData using Power BI desktop or Excel Power Query tools is not supported.
Purchase requisitions: Punch-out from external catalogs It is not possible to check out a shopping cart from an external catalog to a purchase requisition.
Trace Parser and PerfTimer These tools are not working or have limited functionality for this release. These features will be implemented in a future release.
SSRS scale out Currently SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) does not support scaling out. This feature will be added in a future release.
Telemetry Currently no telemetry is transferred into the cloud. In a future update we will start transferring telemetry data into the cloud.
Data task automation Data task automation is not currently implemented.

Features not planned for on-premises deployments

The following features are not intended for use in on-premises deployments. There are no plans to implement these features in on-premises deployments.

Feature Description
SSRS Report Viewer control SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) does not support a report viewer control that is compatible with the on-premises web client. Reports are rendered as PDF documents by the on-premises service. Use extensions to enable embedded drill-thru links in application reports.
Document Routing Agent This component is not necessary for on-premises deployments. On-premises deployments are hosted on domain-authenticated servers. This offers secure, direct access to network printer devices.
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