Let´s say.... I’ve found a new reason to move from Dynamics NAV to Business Central on cloud

Just today I was notified that one of the customers had a "small problem", the IT guy told us that "we got a security breach or maybe a OS vulnerability and guess what? the server files was encrypted, can you help us? i have a backup from last Thursday (today is Monday).

I felt an icy spasm going down my spine and think "sh..., a lot of work coming..." and, oh yes, my salesman promised that I would solve the problem.

So, we need to format and install one server and after that, promote that server to AD with DNS, a second server as app server for SQL Server (need to check version but I’m going to install 2016 because I don’t want to look for the 2014) and dynamics NAV (look for which cumulative update was installed), restore the backup and cross my fingers waiting the bak works without errors.

Then a little more work (which I will not do), detaching and re-attaching computer to the new domain (yep the SID´s change so the trust relations between the server and the workstations need to be recreated not forgetting the users, OU´s and the secpol (hope they have some kind of documents about this).

With all this work to be done I can only think:

• How many files (docs, xls, ppt, etc) were lost?
• How many installers?
• What about the secpol? permissions, etc.
• More than 50 computers to be rejoined to the new domain.
• I don’t know how many users should be created, one by one because I think they don’t have an excel file to use a script.

And finally, if the customer has their ERP in the cloud, they can avoid this work because:

• When you have your systems in the cloud, you have a central place to create and manage your users, and if you use certificates for connection, nobody can "hack you" (well, if you send your certificate to everybody this can happen).
• In the cloud you have your "DB" regularly backed up so you can lose 1 day, no more than that.
• You don’t need to worry about versions of SQL and/or NAV, you will always have the most recent.
• I don’t need to cross the city (Mexico City) from west to east using 3 or more hours in transit
• And the most important thing, I don’t need to charge the customer with a lot of money for the job.

With this kind of things, every time I convince myself that the cloud is not so bad business

Now, lets see:

The monthly payment to the IT guy (in yearly calc)
+ electric energy for the servers
+ licenses (Windows Server, SQL)
+ hardware costs
+ the invoice for my work to put everythig up again (just this time I hope)
equals
1 year of Business Central and a little more

For the second year maybe they need to invest a little but this cost is a expense and you can deduct expenses from taxes payable (VAT and Income) so, you have another incentive to migrate to the cloud.

Dont be so sure yet? try to make numbers as I do in the previous paragraph, and I'm not taking into account the problem of stopping a production plant for two or three days.