Partners react positively to Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Operations (AX 7) on-premise plans

Last week, Microsoft announced that it will be offering Dynamics 365 for Operations (formerly AX 7) as an on-premise solution or in partner-hosted environments, outside of Azure, sometime this summer.

Reaction to the news from partners has been positive.

"This is big news for many of the customers that are not yet ready for cloud for several reasons," Yogesh Kasat, a partner at RealDynamics, told MSDynamicsWorld.com. "Finally Microsoft is listening to the customers."

In a blog post, Clients First Business Solutions, which noted that the on-prem solution is expected to be generally available in June, acknowledged that there are benefits to running Dynamics 365 for Operations in the cloud such as embedded analytics, machine learning and Internet of Things (IoT) functionality.

However, the company stated that despite these advantages, some organizations might not be ready to store their critical data in the cloud for any number of reasons, including that they need control of their "data, data residency, and data isolation."

Marketing coordinator Anita Smallwood, the author of the Clients First post, said the flexibility in the deployment options of the solution will now enable new and existing customers to license both local business data and cloud and edge deployments.

But Smallwood pointed out that on-premise data will not benefit from Microsoft's intelligent cloud capabilities like Power BI, artificial intelligence or other capabilities available to cloud subscribers.

Ellipse Solutions also weighed in on the new development.

"While services like Power BI are technologically available to those who opt for the on premise option, they will have ...