Microsoft Dynamics 365/CRM cloud deployments: Taking on CIO concerns in regulated industries

"The answer is the cloud: what is the question?"

So asks Mohamed Mostafa at the beginning of his session, Technical and strategic considerations for Microsoft Dynamics 365 cloud deployments, which he has delivered numerous times in Europe, and will deliver anew at Directions North America 2017. There, Mostafa will describe lessons learned from a 13,000-user cloud deployment of Dynamics CRM at a highly-regulated multinational financial institution. He will delve into the technical and business considerations of the online/on-premise decision.

People in the banking and financial services sectors typically tell Mostafa "There's no way we can be in the cloud." "What I say is, ‘You have very good points for not being in the cloud; however, is the cloud really a problem?'"

It is at that point that he breaks into the case study of the UK subsidiary of that financial institution, where Mostafa architected the 13,000-user cloud deployment. The business was accountable to 17 regulatory bodies and was risk-averse about a cloud deployment. However, "Microsoft Azure Cloud ticked every box for this business, and they did go online," says Mostafa.

"I'm not saying it would work for every business, although it worked for a very heavily-regulated business," he says. "Even if you decide to go to the cloud, there are very important considerations that you must be aware of. For example, you have some limitations on reporting - what are the options to overcome that?"

He sees the greatest challenge to reporting being that you cannot run Transact SQL or T-SQL queries against a Dynamics 365/CRM database ...