In order to decide the best way of upgrading your Dynamics NAV system to Dynamics 365 Business Central there are a few things that you’ll need to consider:
Key considerations
1. Ask yourself whether you want to do a clean start upgrade or whether you want to do an upgrade including your existing modifications and data.
If you want to do an upgrade of your existing modifications and data, then you’ll need to think about how much bespoke code you have. All this code will ideally need to be migrated to ‘extensions’ – the new way of doing modifications in Business Central.
2. What add-ons do you have?
Not all add-ons are available for Business Central (or at least for Business Central when hosted in the Microsoft Public Cloud environment). All partners are working on their add-ons to make them work within new the Business Central environment, but this may affect the timescales of your upgrade.
3. Next decide whether you want to keep your perpetual licence or go subscription.
If you bought your licence on a perpetual basis, you own your licence and have probably been paying Microsoft annually for enhancement (known as 'BREP') for the latest upgrades. You can move to a subscription licence but Microsoft will only provide a 40% discount on subscription licences until June 2020. If you upgrade your perpetual licence Microsoft will give you 2 named user licences for every 1 concurrent user you have.
4. Where would you like to host your system – you have 3 choices; The Microsoft Public Cloud, The Microsoft Private Cloud (known as ‘Azure’) or your own environment.
Microsoft Public Cloud
Since April 2018 it has been possible to host your Business Central system on a fully managed Microsoft Shared Cloud environment.
Benefits:
- Automatic updates of the software
- Hosting is included within your subscription licences – more cost effective
- Fully managed including all automatic back-ups etc.
Disadvantages:
- Less control over your Business Central Environment (you cannot control when updates happen)
- No performance control (there is no SQL Access)
- Only available on subscription
Microsoft Private Cloud - ‘Azure’
If you like the idea of hosting in the Cloud but are put-off by the limited control of the Public Cloud you can host your system in a Private Cloud environment. Resellers like The NAV People have ‘Managed Services’ teams which are dedicated to managing their customers’ Azure environments.
Benefits:
- Greater control over updates and upgrades
- Fully managed including all automatic back-ups etc.
- You can choose between the subscription or on-premise licensing modules
- Ability to maximise performance and tune system
Disadvantages:
- As you don’t get automatic upgrades, these will need to be planned and deployed as mini projects to ensure you are on the latest software version
- Additional hosting costs
Your own hosting environment
You can host your environment either yourself or through a 3rd party provider. This can be either on the Cloud or on a physical server.
Benefits:
- Full control over your own environment
- You can choose between the subscription or on-premise licensing modules
Disadvantages:
- As you don’t get automatic upgrades, these will need to be planned and deployed as mini projects to ensure you are on the latest software version
- Additional hosting costs