With Dynamics NAV Managed Service for Partners, Microsoft Offers Partners New Path to Cloud Business

Microsoft has announced general availability of Microsoft Dynamics NAV managed service for partners, a new option for hosting multi-tenant NAV-based solutions on Azure with new administrative tools, licensing, and cloud support provided by Microsoft.

The program has been in preview since April 2015, Morris says. And according to Microsoft MVP Eric Wauters, Microsoft reportedly told partners at Directions EMEA today that NAV partners are actively supporting customers on the service already.

In a new blog post, Microsoft marketing executive Wayne Morris described four main benefits of the managed service:

• Streamlined administration: A new management portal and web services API enable Microsoft partners to efficiently deploy, manage, upgrade and monitor Microsoft Dynamics NAV multitenant solutions on Microsoft Azure.
• Simplified operations: Cloud-optimized licensing and billing helps partners deploy customers more quickly, manage users seamlessly, and receive a single bill from Microsoft for the service.
• Microsoft Azure: Auto-scaled, load-balanced and highly-available, the service utilizes Microsoft Azure, which includes many built-in benefits such as enterprise-class security, geo-replication, backup support, and point-in-time restore.
• 24x7 support from Microsoft: Microsoft Cloud Engineers monitor and maintain partner solutions, customers, and users, offering Microsoft partners a financially-backed SLA of 99.9% availability.

Wauters describes the demonstrated setup process as being "almost childish" in its simplicity. He reports that Microsoft also addressed basic questions like how to handle upgrades, performance, and backups, as well as new licensing updates that will make adding and removing users more efficient.

While details are still light on NAV managed service for partners, the approach would seem to bring the product's cloud strategy more closely in line with ...