Managing Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations: Why the cloud calls out for managed services

Editor's Note: This article is a preview of Avanade's March 21 webcast on managed services for Dynamics 365 for Operations

There's an irony to evolving IT paradigms. With every innovation and new trend in computing, organizations and users must change, often uncomfortably, even though progress is supposed to mean making things easier and less costly. Just like the early 1990's when we went from mainframes to client-server, now we're moving from on-premise to cloud-based solutions for business applications, computing power, network bandwidth, and all manner of IT componentry needed to run a business in today's digital world. And Microsoft Dynamics AX solutions owners are now facing this future directly with the range of options for moving to Dynamics 365 for Operations.

In some ways, what's old is new again, and with that comes quite a bit of complexity and cost. Let me break it down in terms of what we're seeing.

Volume & Type of Computing Environments

In the Azure world, the moment you spin up a machine, you typically start to incur a charge (even if you forget about it!). It's not uncommon at even a medium-sized enterprise to have 10 or more testing environments each costing $1,000 a month. And then there are the production environments on top of that. Time to double down. Companies can easily spend as much as $75,000 to $100,000 more than they need to if they're not careful.

Various Levels of User Profiles

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