Move your business from on-premises to the cloud

If you have an on-premises deployment of business applications, you might be missing out on the benefits of the cloud. You can upgrade or migrate your on-premises solution to Dynamics 365—and keep your business processes and data to speed up your digital transformation.

Dynamics 365 helps you move your on-premises solution to the cloud, as long as it meets compatibility and security standards. You can also use your existing investments in implementation, if you follow supported and cloud-ready techniques. But you still need to consider the topics we discuss in this section, such as extension and operations.

Considerations

Before you move to the cloud, think about these items:

• Check whether your legacy system meets your business needs and whether your users like it. It's the most important factor in deciding how to move to the cloud.

• Make sure your data model, design, and quality are good enough to support your cloud solution. Your data should help you adopt new cloud features and grow your business. It shouldn't hold you back with poor design or quality.

• Choose a cloud platform that can store and process your data safely and legally. You might need to change how you authenticate and integrate your data to make it cloud ready.

• Know your data category, flow, transformations, location, and encryption before and after the migration. This helps you follow your security policies and plan your cutover.

• Moving to the cloud can take several steps and require compatibility and validation checks. Understand the process and review the prerequisites early on.

• You might need to fix or replace some components in your on-premises solution to make them work in the cloud. Look for deprecated, unsupported, or risky customizations and patterns that could affect security or performance.

• You might need to update your existing integration and peripheral applications to work with the cloud solution.

• You might need to deal with some changes in process, performance, and usability due to latency, service protection limits, or license capacity.

Moving your existing Dynamics 365 on-premises solution to the cloud can be a great way to advance your digital transformation.

Next steps

• Read the overview to understand why cloud solutions are important for your business
• Learn how to adopt a cloud mindset and prepare for the transition
• Review the cloud implementation considerations for a successful project
• Learn how to customize and extend cloud applications to fit your needs
• Learn how to operate in the cloud and manage your solution
• Learn how to keep up with technology using Dynamics 365 and benefit from continuous updates
• Use the checklist to follow the best practices for implementing cloud solutions
• Read the case study to see how a cloud mindset and a proper strategy can help your organization