Five challenges to prepare for when selecting Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online

Editor's Note: Sandor Schellenberg will be presenting a live webcast on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 integration scenarios on October 24^th.

The cloud has created a booming business opportunity for businesses of all sizes. More and more companies are shifting their strategy to include the use of cloud technologies. Microsoft is now "mobile first cloud first" and Dynamics CRM is (now) a key piece of their business cloud platform.

Of course, the cloud already has an important place in our daily lives. You might not realize it, but we depend more and more on cloud solutions despite the nearly routine negative media attention about security and privacy issues. The choice of cloud from a business perspective might also be affected by the way we think about it in our private lives. This article will focus on five areas that I have found deserve special attention when an organization considers a Dynamics CRM solution in the cloud: performance, authentication, support, data, and reporting.

Performance

End user adoption of a business solution depends on performance and easy usage of the system. For on-premise deployments you have control over the environment and can tweak the performance over the network. By contrast, with cloud solutions you will depend on the hosting party and, of course, the internet connection.  

In both cases it is important to take a look at your current internet connectivity, which could be affected by proxies and firewalls. The same goes for multi-browser support, which is a nice feature of the latest release of Dynamics CRM but from a support view can be more complex.