The hosting of business applications is eveolving quite rapidly. It's not SaaS in its fulle extend but rather a very strong example of how the Microsoft partne ecosystem works to provide organisations with optimal / fit for purpose solutions :
... Q&A: Two Microsoft Dynamics ERP partners discuss Microsoft’s partner-hosted, subscription-based licensing model that helps customers meet today’s business challenges.
Today’s businesses face complex challenges and immense opportunities via the Internet. Among these challenges is the need to deploy - and have the IT infrastructure to support - business management solutions that align with their ever-evolving business needs with limited budget and staffing resources.
To help businesses address these challenges, Microsoft is offering customers who want to implement their enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions with choices in how the software is delivered. These options include on-premise solutions, partner-hosted solutions or a combination of the two. The company is also providing more choices in how solutions are purchased, with options for upfront licensing, pay-as-you-go or financing. The strategy puts the customer in ultimate control of how they want to implement software solutions in their businesses.
To learn more about how Microsoft’s partner-hosted, subscription-based licensing model helps customers meet today’s business challenges, PressPass spoke with two Microsoft Dynamics ERP partners: Claus Bo Nielsen, sales director with TDC Hosting, Denmark’s largest provider of IT outsourcing services to the mid-market; and Nigel Redwood, managing director with e-know.net, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and supplier of fully managed hosted IT services to customers worldwide. ...
The Q&A also adresses the requirement / need of organsiations to opt for Hosted solutions :
Nielsen: Hosted solutions are ideal for small- or medium-sized businesses that have more than one physical location – whether domestic or international – which is our core customer base. They need highly skilled consultants and experts to handle their IT design, deployment and managed services. They want to ensure their IT services and tech support are up and running 24x7, rather than ending when office hours do. Other customers just need a fully outsourced IT service, delivering them an SLA (service level agreement) that exactly meets their requirements – they want to buy IT as they do other office utilities (e.g. water, power, etc.), and with a fixed monthly price tag and contract, making the budgeting of IT possible for years to come.
Redwood: Our customer base consists primarily of businesses in the manufacturing and distribution sector. They are using Microsoft Dynamics NAV to run their organizations and streamline their processes, whilst the hosted delivery mechanism removes the internal hassle and risk of running a system which is now critical to daily processing. We also have customers that are using Microsoft Dynamics NAV in industries such as computer services and health care. As a result of the delivery method, the majority of customers tend to be multi-location and focused completely on the use of the software to improve their business processes.
PressPass: What are the top three reasons your customers are choosing this deployment model?
Nielsen: Our customers appreciate the lower total cost of ownership (TCO) and access to experts for IT design, deployment and hosted services. We can deploy the Microsoft Dynamics solutions in a modern datacenter, using blade hardware, virtualization on all levels, including servers, backup, networks, security and firewalls, using the most modern monitoring systems that help our customers scale their businesses in a very cost effective way with maximum flexibility. This gives the basics for a high uptime guarantee and unlimited access to the customer’s core value – their data.
Redwood: Our customers have given us positive feedback about the product and the hosted deployment method and that is evidenced by the fact that they’ve signed long-term contracts and continue to renew them. We believe too it’s the right approach. First, there are no initial capital costs. We have high SLAs in place with our customers, guaranteeing 99 percent uptime around-the-clock, with users being able to connect from anywhere at any time. Finally, there’s the business continuity factor. The solution provides built-in disaster recovery facilities, which means our customers can spend their time focusing on maximizing their use of Microsoft Dynamics NAV because they no longer need to spend time maintaining their IT environment. They are required to employ only a minimum level of IT staff and the fixed monthly fees allow them to plan their IT costs accurately.
Source: Partners Grow Businesses to Meet Demand for Hosted Microsoft Dynamics ERP Solutions
Author: Date Published: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 07:10:00 GMT
