Episode 430: Exploring Business Central: Online vs. On-Premises

Are you considering Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central as your ERP software, or are you considering an upgrade to your version of Microsoft Dynamics NAV?

 

In this insightful discussion, host Krs Ruyeras and Brad Prendergast welcome two distinguished Microsoft MVPs, Duilio Tacconi and Alexander Drogin, to discuss the key differentiators between  Business Central Online and On-Premises. They explore licensing, infrastructure, performance, and security considerations, offering valuable perspectives for businesses deciding between these two platforms. The conversation buzzes with the benefits of cloud flexibility and the challenges of managing on-premises setups, delivering a fun, clear, and inspiring guide to making informed choices that’ll spark ideas and fuel confident decisions.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics
Corner.
Is it faster if I run on atreadmill inside my house versus
running outside?
I'm your co-host, chris.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
And this is Brad.
This episode was recorded onAugust 7th 2025.
Chris, Chris, Chris, Is itfaster?
I think it's a matter of howfast you're running.

Speaker 1 (00:24):
Well, it depends the environment too, right, like if
you're inside on a treadmill,it's consistent.
Maybe outside you get theenvironment, you get the asphalt
, maybe some trail.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Some elevation.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
I see what you're saying.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
And just like the environment may impact your
choice on where you're going torun, you also have choices when
you're using Business Central torun Business Central Online or
Business Central On-Premise Withus today we had the opportunity
to talk about some of thedifferences between those two.
We had some two amazing guests.
We had Alexander andilio.

Speaker 4 (01:17):
Arrivederci, hello, hello, good morning.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Hello, hello Hello hello.
How are you?
How are?

Speaker 4 (01:25):
you doing, sir?
Yeah, all good.
How's Santa?
Can you hear me all well?

Speaker 2 (01:29):
We hear you well, I hear you well.
It's always good to hear you.
We're waiting for the realItalian stallion over here.
It's a pleasure, it's an honorto speak to the real Italian
stallion and Mr Alexander, doyou know, to the real Italian
stallion?
And, mr Alexander, do you knowwhere the real Italian stallion

(01:52):
comes from.
Nope, no, alexander, do youknow?

Speaker 4 (01:55):
Sorry, do I know what ?

Speaker 2 (01:57):
The real Italian stallion.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
Is it Rocky?
Rocky Balboa?
It is.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Rocky.

Speaker 4 (02:03):
Balboa.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
So that's where the real Italian stallion comes from
you're the real.
Italian stallion, not RockyBalboa.
I'm honored of this title well,I say it to you all the time.
Now, I didn't think you pickedit up, or if anybody knew, but
that's what it is.
So, no, that's good.

(02:27):
We appreciate you both takingthe time to speak with us today.
I've been looking forward tothis conversation for a long
time, because I have thisquestion asked to me often.
When I say often, it's probablyalmost daily.
Now I don't want to say almostdaily, but it's several times a
week.
You know what that question iswhat is the difference between

(02:50):
business central online andbusiness central on-premises?
And we couldn't think of twoothers.
Well, we could think of twoothers that would be able to
help us answer that question,besides the two of you.
So you're on the spot now, bothof you.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
I let Alexander start .

Speaker 2 (03:18):
But before we get into that, I do have some
questions on it.
And before we get into that,would you mind telling us a
little bit about yourself,Alexander?
I?

Speaker 4 (03:26):
do have some questions on it.
And before we get into that,would you mind telling us a
little bit about yourself,alexander?
Yeah, I'll try.
First of all, good evening,good afternoon, it's good
morning for you, and thank youfor having me in this podcast.
I'm really happy to be here.
Well, a little bit about me.
Well, you know me as a businesscentral developer.
Yeah, I started in this areawell, pretty long time ago.

(03:48):
It was over 20 years now, uh,when business center was still
called navision attain and itwasn't even microsoft.
And since that, all time, sincethat time I'm still working
with, with navision dynamics,nav, bc, whatever it's called.
Well, I start.
I've been so in differentcapabilities, let's say, worked

(04:11):
at an end client in consulting.
For a while we even worked withduilio together providing
support for partners atmicrosoft.
Although duido was on the frontline, I was hiding behind and
the development team actuallyfixing those bugs that made it
through the first line support.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
It's good to be behind the front lines, to be
hidden in the back.

Speaker 4 (04:37):
I never envy those who are in the front actually
dealing with partners andclients, so Duilio was the hero.

Speaker 3 (04:46):
No no.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Maybe you were fixing your own bugs?

Speaker 3 (04:52):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
That's a shot from the front line.
That was good.
I like that.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
It was 15 years ago, probably 15 years Long.
Probably 15 years Long, longtime ago, in another galaxy.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
Time goes so quick it feels like it moves fast.
Twilio, would you mind tellingus a little bit about yourself?

Speaker 3 (05:19):
Yeah, I'm Twilio Tacconi.
I used to work in Microsoftlike Alexander for more than 15
years and then I moved to apartner site, and in a partner
site I'm more on the performanceside.
I don't want to define myselfas a developer, I do not pretend
to, but I'm just analyzing,through telemetry and other

(05:40):
sources, depending on if you areon-premises or online, what is
actually the output of the code.
So this kind of questionon-prem or online it is
something that I have in myheart, in my soul actually, and
I'm just taking and tacklingthis every day in a different

(06:01):
way from the specific area thatI'm working on.
Yeah, that's good, that's good.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Thank area that I'm working on.
Yeah, that's good, that's good.
Thank you both again for beingon.
Thank you both for all that youdo for the community and for
everyone using Business Central.
So, to go back to it, it is aquestion because when a customer
has an implementation, or ifthey're looking at a new
implementation, or if they'relooking to upgrade, they are

(06:24):
presented with Business CentralOnline and Business Central
On-Premises from some partnersand as well as the literature
they can read.
But along with the question ofwhat's the difference, you know,
the first question is well,which one should I use?
But in order to make thedecision on which one you should
use, I think it's important toknow what the differences are

(06:46):
and maybe why someone would useBusiness Central Online versus
on-premises or vice versa.
So, with that, what do you guysthink?
What would you say are thedifferences?

Speaker 1 (06:58):
Would that make a difference, though, brad?
If it's going to be from abusiness aspect, would you
consider the cost as well, ontop of long-term maintenance, on
top of the technical?

Speaker 2 (07:10):
This, is what I'm looking for.
It's what are the differencesbetween business central online
and business central on-premises?
And then that's always theother day.
Do you say on-premise oron-premises?
Did you know?
A lot of people talk about that, by the way, and then some just
say, yes, you say on-premise oron-premises?
Did you know?
A lot of people talk about that, by the way, and then some just
say yes, it's on-premise, andthen some just cut it short and
say on-prem to avoid it.
But no, there are manydifferences.

(07:32):
So, mr Duilio and Alexander,what do you think?
What are some of the bigdifferences between Business
Central Online and on-premises?

Speaker 4 (07:49):
Well, if Duilu, let me start, I would say well, we
can look from very differentpoints of view.
Maybe we can think first, likeChristopher suggested, from a
business perspective, fromdevelopment, maintenance costs
and so on.
But I think the most importantaspect right now, first of all,
that if a new customer comes toyou and asks if I should use
on-prem or SaaS, the first thingto consider is that they can't

(08:15):
buy an on-premise licenseanymore.
So I think the question issolved basically oh okay, yeah,
basically oh, okay yeah, so sowe're done.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
We're done with the conversation.

Speaker 4 (08:32):
Yeah that's the biggest difference.
I believe it's Microsoft likeincentive they want clients to
use to be in SaaS.
So there is no new licenseson-premise.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Okay.
So for those that are using theexisting versions and they want
to move to Business CentralOnline, there's still some
differences from those usingBusiness Central on-premise and
Business Central Online to maybemake the move to Business
Central online if they'reon-premise or vice versa, if

(09:10):
they have the licenses in placeor if they do have licensing for
it as well.
So we talked about there is alicense required for Business
Central on-prem, so you arerequired to buy licenses if
you're using Business CentralOnline, but those are the user
license and the user levels,whereas Business Central On-Prem
, you're required to have theuser license, the application

(09:34):
license and any licenses thatyou need for extensions as well.
So what else, mr Dweller, doyou have something big?

Speaker 3 (09:59):
I know you have a lot in there, all the
infrastructure behind the scene.
But if you want to go in theon-prem then you have to pay for
the license, plus you have tocreate your own infrastructure,
maintain your own infrastructure.
Those are the two main point inhere.
So the same license, but thenif you want to go into

(10:21):
on-premise, then you have totake care also of what is
running behind the scene.
Then you have to purchase yourlicense of what is running
behind the scene.
Then you have to purchase yourlicense for the SQL server and
for the SQL server.
Then you have to purchase thelicense for your Windows server
and then you just have topurchase your own SAN for the
disks in order to make itperform, and so on and so forth.
And this is just for theinfrastructure per se.
And then you have to maintainthe infrastructures.

(10:43):
I mean that once you havedeployed everything, even the
deployments, you have to do thisby your own.
Once the deployment has beendone, then you just have to
schedule your own maintenancefor the SQL Server re-indexing,
update of the statistics, allthe jobs that you want behind
the scene, everything that isupon you, including the typical

(11:05):
maintenance that you have behindthe scene.
Everything it is upon you,including the typical
maintenance that you have to doon the SQL server and on the
Windows server, from a securityperspective or using a patching
strategy.
All of the things that I toldyou has been performed and done
by Microsoft under the umbrellaof the Dynamics 365 Business
Central online version.

(11:26):
So this is one of the two bigdifferences.

Speaker 1 (11:30):
Don't you have to do the IIS and web services and SSL
and DNS, all of that right.

Speaker 3 (11:39):
Yeah right, completely completely.
And then you have to take careof everything, even if your
infrastructure because this ispart of your infrastructure even
if your infrastructure mighthave some problem with security,
then you have to do penetrationtests.
This is what Microsoft alsodoes by itself in order to see

(11:59):
okay, is my online versionsecure enough?
And if it's not secure enough,then they will add much more
security substrate, softwaresubstrate or controls or
whatever it is, and it iscontinuing evolving, upgrading,
updating.
That is one thing.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
That sounds like a big one.
We're starting off pretty bigwith a big difference.
So one of the differences withonline, you don't have to be
concerned with theinfrastructure.
With on-prem, you have to beconcerned with the
infrastructure and again,someone may need to use it and
they may have an infrastructure.
But when I think of maintaininginfrastructure, you also have

(12:41):
to have the individuals tomaintain the infrastructure.
So that's what just came to mewhen were saying that, as you're
thinking of, all that you haveto work with is somebody needs,
there's a person that needs todo all this not just the
licensing.
Yes, yes, just not the licensingfor it as well, which is quite
um.
It's interesting now that youput it in that that light, wow,

(13:02):
uh.
What are some other differences?
Are there any differenceswithin the application?
We talked about the licensing.
That's a difference and, as Ialluded to, I know one thing
I'll throw in there is if youcreate extensions ptes for
yourself, or if you havesomebody do them for you, then
you need to also pay for theobjects, like they used to in
the old days, I guess, but weall have been working with it

(13:24):
for a long time.
Someone new may not understand,but the extensions that you
create are also required to payfor those objects as well, for
those extensions that you use,correct?
yes, that's right yeah, and ifyou're online it's not necessary
to use those.
So with that geez, we'll gothere, we'll keep going, keep

(13:48):
going.
So what are some otherdifferences that stand out?
Is there anything?
From the application point ofview, the platform is a big one,
or, like you said, the behindthe scenes, the infrastructure
is a big one.

Speaker 3 (14:01):
AI out of the box is one thing actually.
All the AI feature the one ofthe box is one thing actually.
All the AI features the onewith the artificial intelligence
that are in the online version,all of those ones are going
with under the umbrella of theonline version.
Those ones are not available tobe used on the on-premise.

(14:22):
In the on-premise you still can, but you have to provide your
own development and then connectto your own AI spots and so on.

Speaker 4 (14:32):
And, if I may add, it's not only about AI, it's
basically any Azure services,because we can't talk about
Business Central right now.
Another big thing at BusinessCentral when we talk about
Business Central on-premise,it's kind of a standalone
application.
So we install it, we use it.
Now, what different like whyBusiness Central has become

(14:54):
Business Central and was notNorwegian anymore?
Because it's a different kindof application, because it's
part of a bigger ecosystem.
All the whole Azureinfrastructure and we have easy
integration, simple integrations, with lots of Azure services
out of the box, practically whenthey're online it can be done.

(15:15):
Yes, it can be done on-premiseas well, but involves more of
those qualified people who canset it up, who know how to do it
, more penetration testing, moresecurity concerns when they
integrate on-premise networkwith Azure.
So Business Central Onlinecomes with many benefits of

(15:37):
those Azure services.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
Okay, so Business Central Online, you can have
access to Azure services.
Dulee mentioned AI On-prem.
You can have access to Azureservices.
Julie mentioned AI On-prem.
You can have access to thoseservices, but it requires
someone to do some sort ofdevelopment, whether you
purchase something to do it orif you hire someone to do the
development.
What are some of the otherfeatures of the Azure services

(16:00):
that are within Business Centralthat differentiate between
on-prem and online?

Speaker 4 (16:06):
I can think of blob storage, file storage access
that are within Business Central, that differentiate between
on-prem and online.
I can think of blob storage,file storage access, for example
, if we want to use any storageonline.
Well, when it comes tointegrations, especially when
it's integrations, we can useall the rich tool tool set that
azure can offer like uh, uh, asyour, as you use um yeah,

(16:36):
basically it is.

Speaker 3 (16:39):
I talk about ai, an agent.
Uh, those are all services.
This one.
Some of them come out of thebox natively and those are only
available out of the box in theonline version and not in the
on-prem.
But it's not that, because inthe on-prem you cannot have it,
but you just have to developthis your own and this is adding

(16:59):
extra cost to the solution.
This one it is already thereand maintained by Microsoft so
that it is covering correctlyall the standard of development,
deployment, security and so onand so forth.
This is the good part of theonline version.
There are many, many goodies.
Other kind of integration outof the box.

(17:20):
It is with Teams, and even withTeams you can use it and you
can even bundle this with Teamsand even with Teams you can use
it and you can even bundle thisto Teams.
Well, here in Italy, I think,also for the dimension of the
companies, then we don't havethat much integration with
Microsoft Teams.
But this is just anothergoodies, another things that has

(17:43):
been added.
And if you go to BC Learn andthen you see what are the things
that are available for theon-premise and for the online
version, you have not a longlist, but a medium list of the
things that are not available inthe on-premises, Even something
also related to the connectionbetween power platform the
online version, born with nativeconnection also with the Power

(18:05):
Platform, or the Power thingy,with the Power BI and Power Apps
and everything that you havewith the power in front of it.
It will be much more easierwithin the online version
compared to the on-premises.

Speaker 4 (18:26):
And we need to turn CRM to the left.

Speaker 3 (18:28):
The R365 as well.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
Yeah, so a lot of that.
Technical additionalrequirements, right?
I think you need gatewaysinstalled locally in your
application server or somewherein your network and someone has
to maintain that as well.

Speaker 2 (18:43):
Okay.
So if someone's looking to useai with business central, I know
they keep at the microsoftkeeps adding features and
functionality, like now, as youmentioned, the agents, sales,
sales order agent, payables,agent, and they have other
co-pilot summary now they have.
I'm still waiting for thatautofill to work, but we'll see

(19:04):
uh I'm hoping, I'm waiting, Ikeep trying, every, every, every
release I try to see if I canget that to to fill something
from outside, uh for an addressor something to see.
So if you're looking to have anyintegrations, it's not to say
that you can't do it withon-premise, it's just a little
bit more effort, uh, to connectto any of the azure services

(19:27):
that we spoke about.
And if, uh, you don't need it,I guess you can take that
consideration off.
Uh.
But in my opinion, just tothrow it in there, just to add
something, thinking about that,you may limit yourself.
You may not need some of thoseservices, but you have to think
about the future as well andwhat it would take to use some
of those services.

(19:47):
And so someone who's looking touse that natively, as you had
mentioned, without having tohire or pay for someone to do
the development which, again,you may have a reason for that,
which is okay, just to keep thatin mind to consideration as
well.
And with that, is thereanything else that stands out

(20:09):
for either one of you?
The differences between them,with the on-prem version and
online version.

Speaker 4 (20:20):
Well, we kind of.
Yeah, go ahead.
Oh, we mentioned a little likewe touched upon the development
side.
We said that on-prem, forexample, we need to pay for
additional objects when wedevelop, customize anything
which we don't need to do inSaaS.
But there is other side of it.
We are more flexible on-prem inwhat we can do, what we can

(20:44):
access.
We can access file system, forexample, which we obviously
can't do in SaaS.
The file system doesn't exist.
Want to store anything?
Use blob storage, file storage,those Azure services, net
control, net add-ins.
We want something really custom.
We need to full flexibility ora full power of NET.

(21:05):
We can do it when we deployon-prem in the cloud.
Now we are very much limitedand if we want to do something
like this, we have to thinkabout contributions into the
system app, because only systemapp can access dotnet.
Actually, I had this kind ofproblem when we needed

(21:30):
integration by FTP, for example,until recent time, thanks to
one recent open sourcecontribution in Business Central
.
Now we will probably have FTPaccess or FTP services in
Business Central system, butbefore previously we didn't have
.
So it was quite a problem toaccess an FTP server from

(21:51):
Business Central.

Speaker 2 (21:55):
So that's a big point .
So if you're working online,access to the local file system
doesn't exist because itoperates outside of your network
in a sense, so you don't haveaccess to it.
So if you needed to do some FTPintegrations, as you mentioned
that's a common one that I seewhere there are some challenges
with online you have to, as youmentioned, use some online

(22:16):
storage and then, from thatonline storage, exchange the
files, whereas on-prem you canwork with a local file system
and then be able to exchange thefiles through there.
And you mentioned another oneas well.
You mentioned if you needed touse some.
You mentioned use NET controlsor any other custom controls or
apps.
What do you mean by that?

Speaker 4 (22:37):
Well, any kind of NET development.
What was it?
Well, I can give an examplefrom our development perspective
.
I work for LS Retail and in thepast, all the custom code, all
the connections with hardwarefor example, hardware station in

(22:59):
LS used to be a big NET control.
Well, we communicate withhardware a lot.
Well, there is no better way todo it than NET control.
Now we don't have this option.
The only thing we can do isonline communication via APIs.
There's no NET anymore andthere was a lot of NET code here

(23:20):
.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
Oh, with that application, I know there was a
lot, as you had mentioned,because it was a requirement to
work with the hardware, so itrequired to have the NET stack
so that you can interface withthe hardware directly in order
to use the application.
So that's one thing to considerbetween on-prem and online.
See, it's good to deep diveinto this, because I hear so

(23:45):
many different things betweenonline and on-prem, and some are
in favor of it one over anotherfor various reasons, but it's
nice to hear the differencesbetween the two of them as well.
So what can you think?
One thing that I hear, andmaybe you can help articulate it
for me a little bit, is dataaccess is something that I hear

(24:10):
is a big one, that people talkabout Data access and data
capacity.
Can you maybe tell me a littlebit about that with on-prem and
online?

Speaker 4 (24:22):
Well, of course he detailed all those things that
we need to purchase to deployBusiness Central on-premise.
We need to have our hard drives, SSD licenses, but we're
practically unlimited in thestorage when we store data

(24:43):
on-prem right.
We have our own server andstorage is cheap, even if it's
ssd prices are going down lowerand lower on ssd storage when we
are online.
We have 80 gigabytes storageplus three gigabytes per full
user and 80 gigabytes storageplus three gigabytes per full
user and, if I remembercorrectly, three gigabytes per
full user license and twogigabytes per team user license

(25:05):
additionally on top of these 80.
And that's it and additionalstorage.
Well, it can be purchased, butit's not that cheap.
It's quite expensive.
Yeah, and there are somecustomers who have a lot of data
.
If you have terabyte of data,it's not that rare Terabyte of
data and it's one environment,what I'm saying.

(25:27):
80 gigabytes plus it's thelimit per tenant for all
environments and you needproduction environment, you need
sandbox, at least one, and ifyou need two sandboxes for
development, for testing, liketroubleshooting, support, well,
we're talking about threegigabytes data.
How much will it cost?

(25:47):
I don't know the price, but itwill be quite expensive.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
Yes, so that's a consideration.
Then is the amount of storage,amount of data that you would
like to have within yourbusiness central environment,
because online you have a fixedcapacity per your licensing and
then you can purchase additionalcapacity, whereas on-prem you
have the capacity of whicheversystem that you have.

(26:12):
And, as you had mentioned, diskspace now is relatively cheap.
I remember when memory Iremember when remember I was
outside I bought a four gig chipand I think I spent several
hundred dollars for it, right,and I even remember I was I was
so happy and excited that now Ihad like a four gig, uh, four
gig, of ram in my machine.
And in the same thing with diskdrives, remember you talked
about disk drives like, oh, Ihave a gig, I have, uh, 10 gig,

(26:36):
and now it's you know, a littlessd card you can get.
You know 128, 256 gig, for youknow less than 20, so it's uh us
don't get stuck in the 90sbread.

Speaker 3 (26:52):
It was.
It was a good decade, it was a.
It was a very good decade.
I'm trying to bring it backstill.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
I'm trying to bring back the 90s because for many
reasons, for many reasons, butno, thank you.
That's another considerationfor on-prem, for the storage I
hear often as well and I hearothers talk about, is the data

(27:18):
access.

Speaker 3 (27:24):
Let's clear up that.
To be able to have access tothe data directly between
on-prem and online, yeah, well,in the on-prem you can put the
fingers into SQL Server and youcan even deep dive into changing
even the triggers.
But right now it changes sincea couple of versions.
It might also give you an error, from what I remember, but you
can even change what it does inthe trigger.

(27:47):
If you insert in one table,then you can trigger something
else in your premise.
Don't do this because Microsoftalso stated this is the worst
way to do it because otherwiseit might give you unpredictable
results.
But in on-premise, you reallyhave access to anything.
I'll give you just one example.
Another example Microsoft justrecently announced that they

(28:09):
want to introduce in upcomingversion 27, that it is 2025,
wave 2, in Octoberrecordtruncate.
So well, yes, but with some if,if, if, and then in the on-prem
version, if you do truncate,well, it would mean it's the

(28:32):
truncate that it is on that youcan do into SQL Server 11.
Truncate means that, okay, thisis the table.
Okay, remove everything thatyou have inside in a femtosecond
.
So if you have 1 million ofrecords, 10 million of records,
20 million of records, fiveseconds, four seconds, right,
alexander, with a truncate blinkof an eye, your change log,

(28:56):
your job queue entry log or thelog that you have of everything,
I don't know.
Maybe you have sending webservices and then you want to
stay and you want to store thepayload there.
So tables, even with lessrecord, but with big blobs
inside of it, completely flushedaway, and Microsoft want to

(29:16):
introduce this recordtruncate.
That it is just a winning things, but they have limitation.
So it doesn't work.
If you have, from what I'veread, media, media set fields,
because then you have areference and then you might
have orphaned.
Then if you have on delete codeor even events on and after

(29:38):
this kind so there are some ifthis one is not truncated In the
on-premise, still, you want togo with this finger snap thingy
so you delete, but then you haveto handle the media set
orphaned by your own.
So you just have to do theclean up after.
So you have much more degreesof freedom in the on-premise.
But this comes with great power, comes with great

(30:02):
responsibility.
You know what I mean.
I know what that means.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
I know it is true and a lot of times individuals
don't remember that.
As you mentioned, if you'rejust doing a quick truncate, you
do also have the media sets orother links that may be
associated with those records aswell, that uh could get
orphaned and create someproblems.
I go back to the recordtruncate.
I read that recently, uh, and Iwas excited when I read it and

(30:28):
also it took me a moment to getmy head around it, because I
think you can also use filterson that too.
Right?
If I read it correctly, it'snot the same trunccated as.
SQL, you can filter records andyou can still delete a large
number of records while using afilter, instead of having to
loop through and delete them orI don't know where If you did

(30:52):
delete all.

Speaker 3 (30:55):
Yes, I have to still play with this, but from what it
is written, written, the thingsthat it does it takes all the
remaining record into atemporary table, does the
truncate and then inflate themthere.
So if you have, if you want todelete 10 records over 10
million, then it is a bad idea.
Again, I haven't played withthat right now, but if it is

(31:18):
that way then maybe it might bethe way around, but anyway, I
did remember reading that aswell.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
Now that you mentioned that, that it copies
the data off, cleans the tableand then copies the data back or
transfers the data back.
I guess you could say yeah,yeah but it's okay.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
Yes, me too.
I'm really excited.
This works super well with,overall, your custom table, the
one where you store logs orsomething that well, where you
completely have the handle.
And maybe you forget about thisafter one, two, three months
and say, okay, how much recordsI have inside?
Oh, 25 million, million, halfof the database, oh gosh.
And then in the online versionit would be hard to have them

(32:04):
deleted.
If you forget also to applyretention policies since the
beginning, that might happenyeah, no, that's that's good.

Speaker 2 (32:14):
To go back to even what Alexander mentioned in the
beginning, if you have a sandboxenvironment, it goes towards
the capacity.
So if you need to copy yourproduction to your sandbox, you
can truncate some of thosetables that you may not need for
testing.
Again, I'd be very careful todo any of that in production
because of the data that youhave and the other records that
you need, but from a sandboxpoint of view, you may not need

(32:36):
to have all of those entries orall of those transactions to do
testing and that way you're notusing a lot of space that is
limited and expensive onlinewith those sandbox environments,
which is good.
Yeah, that's so.
You know, it's like ChristmasWhenever they publish the list

(32:56):
of what's new or what's comingor what's planned.
I guess you could say it's likea Christmas list for me, and
it's like Christmas Wheneverthey publish the list of what's
new or what's coming or what'splanned.
I guess you could say it's likea Christmas list for me and it's
twice a year, so Christmas doescome twice a year, just so
everybody knows.
It's when they release thewhat's new and planned for wave
one or wave two.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
Christmas wave.

Speaker 3 (33:15):
Yes, it is.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
It is, we'll have to ride that wave.
Another thing thing, and I'llthrow this out there if you have
anything else to add, you canjump in and add it as well.
But my mind races with all ofthe questions that I get asked,
because I get the opportunity,thankfully, to speak with many
people and I get asked manyquestions.
Uh, and Duilio will hit thisone Are there any performance

(33:41):
differences between online andon-premise?
Actually, I have to go.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
Sorry, I have to go the moment you answer that,
we'll just mute you the entiretime.
The moment you answer that,we'll just mute you the entire
time.

Speaker 4 (33:59):
This question is very much linked to the previous one
.
For me and it's my painactually, because Julio said we
can't define triggers when we'reworking on-premise.
We can't define triggersdirectly in the SQL tables.
Never do this.
But I must admit I've done thisand that's only me.
You did it.

Speaker 3 (34:21):
You did it Guilty, guilty, yeah, I am guilty.

Speaker 4 (34:26):
I am guilty, yeah, but why I did this?
Exactly because of performanceproblem.
It was a project where prettylarge database running something
around 100 companies ATE orsomething like that and there
was a job task that wasaggregating data from all these

(34:51):
companies into one single tablethat must contain all the
aggregated data for reporting,basically because if we try to
set up any kind of Power BIaggregations or JetReports or
whatever from dozens of 80, 100companies, it will be well,

(35:12):
let's say, will not perform.
So it was a nightly talk.
It was collecting data from allthese companies into one
aggregated table and, yes, itwas a SQL stored procedure.
It wasn't a trigger, by the way, it was a stored procedure.
And I know when we're talkingabout migration, for example,

(35:32):
from on-prem to cloud, at leastthere is at least one category
of customers I know of who don'twant to do this, exactly
because of performance problemsand direct data access.
They have their own storedprocedures because they have
large, large jobs runningovernight, like stock planning,

(35:54):
for example, inventory plan,stock planning, for example,
inventory plan.
Al is never going to perform aswell as fine-tuned stored
procedure written specificallyfor a task.
Right, because we steal from AL.
We can't work with small bitsof data.
We need to send a large numberof queries to the database.

(36:16):
Well, when it's a storedprocedure, it's going to be
faster anyway and, yes, theyhave their own stored procedures
.
In my case, I found a wayaround it, let's say, still
managed to do it.
I ditched that stored procedure, so did it, did it, moved it to

(36:36):
online somehow.
But there are clients who arereally very reluctant to move to
SaaS because they have theirfavorite stored procedures
fine-tuned very fast and if theymove to SaaS they are limited
to L and it's much slower.
That's a problem of lack of thedirect access and why it's very

(37:00):
much linked to performance.

Speaker 3 (37:03):
And this is not only a YAL, even with the classic
client or other ones, will bethe same thing, this whole
procedure.
If you go down, like Alexanderstated, you cannot be faster
than this because it is all,everything is done server side,
everything completely, so youdon't have any kind of
interaction between a client.
And faster than this because itis all, everything, it is done
server side, everything,completely, so you don't have
any kind of interaction betweena client and then server yeah,
don't move any data betweenbusiness center on sql,

(37:24):
everything down there completelyserver side and, yes, we also
have some, some kind of seedremaining this one.
There is one that it is more orless doing the mrp during the
night with third procedure, butbut those are really corner
cases from very, very releasesin the back.
I was joking when I was sayingI have to go out, but it is the

(37:49):
performance of the onlineversion.
It is getting better and better, release after release, and
you're always running on thelatest version of SQL Server and
always running on the latestversion of SQL Server.
And SQL Server in the latestversion always have goodies that
you can take care of.
And then also AL.
It is right now that it issince NAV 2013,.

(38:11):
It is SQL Server.
Only it might take, with thisshort lifecycle that you have
that it is one hour and a half.
So I think it is the flexible.
It is not modern lifecycle, themodern lifecycle.
It is going out of supportevery two versions.

(38:32):
So the third one will make itthe third one out of support.
This means that even the SQLServer version that in the SQL
system requirements, or better,the compatibility version that
was supported, it is movinghigher and higher in a very
lower timeframe.
This means that you can supportfeatures that have been

(38:53):
introduced with SQL Server 2016,2017, and onwards.
Otherwise, for compatibilityreasons, you cannot do it.
This means that you can support, I don't know.
There is one thing that it ismaxed up.
It is DUP, dop feedback that itwill suggest you the best

(39:16):
degrees of parallelism when aquery is executed.
So we will execute with onedegrees of parallelism.
Let's say it will try withthree and then it will execute,
and then we'll get the result.
Then it will try with two, andthen we'll get the result with
the same, and then we'll say,okay, I can discard the three
from the two and retain the onefrom the two as an execution

(39:38):
plan, then so on and so forth.
So those are just small things.
And maybe there is another onethat is optimized locking, that
it is actually SQL Server 2025.
That still, we cannot use it,right, alexander?

Speaker 4 (39:51):
Yes, but now we still can't use it in Business
Central.
And anyway, now it's availableeven in SQL Server on-premise.

Speaker 3 (40:00):
Yes, but you never know if we change the
transaction isolation level fromthe repeatable read into the
read committed.
You'll never know.

Speaker 4 (40:11):
Maybe.
I know that the idea, theoverall direction of the
development of the way theplatform team is working is
towards reducing the strictness,the level of the isolation
level.
So repeatable read wasintroduced a while ago to solve
certain problems in the platform.

(40:33):
Now maybe it will be changed toread committed.
If those problems can be solvedin a different way, we don't
know.
Maybe.

Speaker 3 (40:42):
Yeah, I remember I think it was changed from
serializable to repeatable readwith NAV 5.0 SP1.
There was a fix in 5.0 SP1 along time ago, yeah.
So from a performanceperspective, it is evolving.
It is really evolving quitefast and for me it is delicious.

(41:02):
Honestly, I very, very, very,very highly prefer an online
environment to work with,because I don't have to take
care of many, many, many stuffto work with, because I don't
have to take care of many, many,many stuff.
If you start to have aperformance problem or if you
want to improve performance,then you have to look okay,

(41:25):
let's have a look at theinfrastructure.
Then it comes that you have torun specific tools.
You have to analyze all theconfigurations and then you have
to analyze all of themaintenance plans that you have
in place, which are the thingsthat you do in the online
version within the telemetry.
Then you have to take care ofall the other things that count
most for you.

(41:46):
All the other stuff are uponthe product group and the
product group.
It is relying on a specificservice behind the scene that it
is taking care with very, veryhigh profession, with something
that most probably any mortalcannot do it exactly.
It is very, very sophisticated.

(42:07):
So I swear it is very, verysophisticated and they are
taking care of this maintenancebased on the information that
they have of more than 45 000right Right now I think it is
more than 50,000 productionenvironment that are evolving.
I'm taking on the data tier andthen they can determine.

(42:29):
Okay, those are the things thatmostly we have to apply in
order to maintain the indexes orto update the statistics and so
on and so forth.
This kind of automation.
For me it is super good and itis far easier to work with in
performance.
On the online version.

Speaker 4 (42:48):
Well, now we're touching the topic.
We usually spend a lot of timewith the video discussing, so if
we start now, we can endtomorrow spend a lot of time
with the video discussing.
So if we start now we can endtomorrow.

Speaker 3 (43:03):
Just for the introduction.
You mean Just for theintroduction.

Speaker 4 (43:07):
Yes, and I would counter that when I work online,
I kind of miss many things.
I miss, you know, I can't seethe execution plan, I miss my
query store.
I can't see it and I want tosee the execution plan.
Well, when I analyzeperformance cases, I need to
mimic the data that client hasexactly.

(43:29):
I need to replicate the volumeof data, the distribution, the
histogram of the datadistribution somehow to see,
well, to hope, that theexecution plan will be the same
that the customer have Whileon-premise.
I can connect, run this query,even on the production database
or a copy of it, and I can seethe execution plan.

(43:51):
It will be executed exactly inthis case.
That's something I'm missing.
And the query store?
Of course Telemetry is good, ithas a lot of statistics.
And the query store.
Of course, telemetry is good,it has a lot of statistics, but
query store is much richer infeatures.

Speaker 2 (44:07):
So do you have the same level of telemetry access
on-prem that you do have online?

Speaker 4 (44:13):
Well, telemetry, yeah Well, we can send the same
telemetry from on-prem that wereceive from SaaS, yes, but we
don't have those analysisfeatures, those troubleshooting
features in SaaS that areavailable on-premise when we
have direct access to a databaseto the back end.

Speaker 2 (44:32):
So, from the performance point of view,
online is getting better and youdon't have access to some of
the features that you haveonline on prem.
Excuse me for troubleshooting.

Speaker 4 (44:46):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (44:47):
So that's why you just called it.

Speaker 3 (44:52):
Yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly.
Like Alexander, I'm, of course,missing the XML representation
or the text, if you want, butI'm using the XML representation
, because it is humanly readableof the estimated execution plan
of the query.

(45:13):
So this is what actually willbe the next execution and what
it is causing the biggestoverhead, in order to optimize
this in the less round trip.
And I do agree that it would begreat to have also the query
execution plan.
The problem of the executionplan is that you want to send

(45:37):
this into telemetry because itmight be super big.
And if you send this for everylong-running SQL query that it
is higher than 750 milliseconds,maybe on demand, it would be
good.
I just want this, this, this,this and that and then just send
me the query execution plan andthen that would be a good
compromise.
Yeah, but yes, it is evolving.

(46:01):
If you look at, this is justthe first signal.
Was with version.
Was the first signal this is aquestion for you about telemetry
when was the first signalintroduced in telemetry in
Business Central?
I know?

Speaker 2 (46:21):
14, maybe.

Speaker 3 (46:24):
Is it 14?

Speaker 2 (46:25):
I know it exists in 2018 and they keep adding
signals to each version.
Which version, I don't know.
Alexander, what do you think?

Speaker 4 (46:33):
I don't remember.

Speaker 3 (46:34):
Version 15 was the first one I was going to say
that.
Yes there were two seniorsnumber up.
Well, no, because version.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
Well, version 14 was the last version where you could
use cal, and they switched itover to al completely in version
15 which don't even get me intothe whole version number thing,
because that will send us to aspiral.

Speaker 3 (46:53):
But version 15 when it became pure al definitely,
and in version 15 they recognizeokay, we need something, some
telemetry, to let you know, todeflect cases to us.
And the first and you.
It was created for theauthorization.
The first one was theauthorization because at the
support they were receiving alot of okay, I cannot get access

(47:16):
, I cannot enter actually insidein my environment.
But because there was probablymore problem with credentials,
then they added this signal Okay, within the signal you can
recognize, okay, then there isan influx, it is a problem.
Otherwise there is only oneuser that cannot enter, exactly.

Speaker 2 (47:35):
So that is a good little bit of history with
telemetry.

Speaker 1 (47:40):
I thought it was designed for online, so that
Microsoft can see everything.

Speaker 3 (47:48):
Before this, the instrumentation with telemetry.
It was even before, beforeversion 15.
And Microsoft, if you imagine,you know, imagine Titanic, the
iceberg, right.
Yes yes, that's like in Titanic, so we just see, maybe from far
distance, the peak of theiceberg.

(48:09):
But Microsoft do have a lot oftelemetry, so maybe we just have
500, 600 seniors I do notremember how much.
We have it, microsoft, theyhave thousands and thousands of
their seniors actually.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
Yes, the telemetry they have is great because they
can see who uses which feature,which button, which, everything,
which is good because it helpswith the understanding of how
the application is used andenhanced.
But no, it wasn't invented justfor that, chris, even a lot of

(48:43):
other applications outside ofbusiness central use telemetry.
Telemetry gets used oneverything Now.
Vehicles, when you're driving,emit telemetry and a lot of
people don't realize thatthere's a lot there.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
So I know I'm saying just from a lot of people's
perspective.
I get that a lot.
You know, it's like like Iunderstand telemetry has been
around, even with other erpsystems as well, but uh, when it
was sort of introduced to theend users a lot of end users I
heard that from their feedback.
It's like, oh, maybe becausethey just want to see more, and
blah, blah, blah and say, well,I think they've always seen a

(49:14):
lot more than what you hadthought, but I appreciate the
history.

Speaker 4 (49:21):
Yeah, we had a little history lesson.

Speaker 2 (49:22):
We should start a trivia in every discussion that
we have.
So to go back to.
So the performance it seems tobe questionable right Between
the two, depending upon what youneed.
But Business Engine Alliancepretty performant.
If you have large systems,maybe have a little bit more

(49:44):
on-prem.
Is that what I'm hearing?

Speaker 4 (49:46):
Yes, a little bit, but on the other hand, well,
it's an exhaustible topicactually, because we haven't
mentioned two things.
First, scaling so when thesystem experiences high load it
will be automatically scaled.
So user sessions will beredistributed to another virtual
machine automatically.
That happens behind the scenein the cloud.

(50:08):
Spikes in workload, so youdon't have to keep always that
backup system, I don't knowadditional extra confidential
resources, additional virtualmachines, just because you have
a spike at some time.
You expect it or it will bedone automatically behind the

(50:31):
scene.
And another thing that we haveis scale out.
In SaaS we always have a copyof the database which can be
accessed in read-only mode fromqueries and from pages.
So these queries will beredirected to a copy of the

(50:54):
database.
That will not affect activeusers posting something or
entering data.

Speaker 3 (50:57):
And reports.

Speaker 1 (50:58):
Reports yeah, yeah, reports as well so that's,
that's a good call out becausethe scaling is important right.
So, as you know, someorganizations where they may
have seasonality, where theyhave a lot more volume, rather
than if you're an on-prem, youkind of have to manage that and
expand that to accommodate thatlittle small maybe a seasonal
kind of component and you're notoversizing your environment

(51:22):
just for that two months thatyou may need.
Where Microsoft, if it's abusiness, the BC Online version,
it would just do that for you.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
And so that's again another technical debt that you
may not want for on-prem.

Speaker 3 (51:40):
I can tell you one word Black Friday that you may
not want for on-prem.

Speaker 4 (51:43):
Go ahead, mr Sir.
One word Black Friday.

Speaker 3 (51:45):
Yeah, exactly yes.
During Black Friday there isthis high volume everyone that
is doing this kind ofintegration with webshops they
have this kind of Black Fridaycraziness.
Then you will see, we willtouch.
We don't end In a scalablesystem.
What does it mean when you haveto scale this kind of

(52:07):
multi-tenant proposition?

Speaker 2 (52:17):
So they will add more and more and more horsepower in
order to make it work duringthe Black Friday.
Yeah, two key points that youmentioned, alexander, but I want
to first go with them in orderbecause I have a question on the
scaling.
So we understand that thesystem will scale based upon the
spikes or the influx of volumeor transaction or load.
I guess you could say Is therea limit to that?
Is there a limit to theduration?

(52:38):
So, if you have a, or is itjust scale to the use of your
system as you use it, are youaware if there's a limit to how
much it can scale?

Speaker 4 (52:49):
I don't know.
I think we spoke about this,I'm sorry.
Go on.

Speaker 1 (52:56):
Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, alexander.
There was a session that I wentto.
They talked about that there'sa threshold percentage where, if
it I believe it was like 80% asit stays consistent at 80
utilize and as it creeps up,then they would go ahead and and
create a vm for you and it's aspecific duration of time.

(53:18):
Where it goes below, that is,below a specific threshold, then
they will go ahead and takethat vm away because you're no
longer using it.
I remember seeing that slidesomewhere, maybe a couple years
ago directions.
It's 60% actually and there isa perfect 60%.

Speaker 4 (53:35):
Oh yeah okay, even lower.
Yeah, a series of podcastsunder Business Central, under
the hood, and there is oneepisode where Christian Heididam
was talking about exactly thistopic.
He mentioned these thresholds.
Yeah, when it's's consistently,when the virtual machine
utilization is consistent over60, there's another one uh

(53:56):
created, uh, and the loadbalancer will start redirecting
user, balancing user sessionsbetween these two machines.
If the two will be above 60, uh, now another one will be
created, and so on, andtheoretically.
Well, they don't mention anylimit to this.

(54:16):
If there is any, sky's thelimit.
Probably Maybe there is somelimit to how much resources the
client can consume, but well, tothe best of my knowledge, it's
not published, at least.

Speaker 2 (54:30):
Okay, and the second part of this I want to
understand and you said it's akey point and you talked through
it in Dualio Combatant as wellis if you're running queries or
reports against the data, it'snot running against your
production system, it's runningagainst a copy of the system.
Therefore, it doesn't impactthe performance.

Speaker 4 (54:54):
Yes, it's actually.
There is a property in reports,queries and pages, as far as I
remember, so we can specifyexactly.
So this report will be readingdata from a scale-out copy, not
accessing the actual productiondatabase, but will be accessing
only the reporting copy.

Speaker 3 (55:13):
Only API, only API queries and API pages.
Just to be precise.
Okay so it's only the.

Speaker 2 (55:19):
API queries and only the API pages.
If you specify that it's forthe data, is it data intent?
I think it's like the dataintent access.

Speaker 4 (55:29):
Is that the property Data access intent yeah,
database access intent.

Speaker 3 (55:34):
it is called, and then you can.
There is also a page insideBusiness Central that is called
database access intent and thiswill show pages, report and
query and then you can determinethere is the default behavior.
And then you can determinethere is the default behavior
and then you can choose readonly or read write.
Okay, and this one.

(55:54):
Let's say some of the reportsare by default customer top 10,
vendor top 10, and customerdetails.
Those are already read only andthey will go, if it is
available in the online version,into the read only node those
reports here, if it is availablein the online version, into the
read-only node those reportshere.
But you can choose what youwant to move into the read-only

(56:16):
node and this means that you'reoffloading your reading from the
transactional node, you'reoffloading into the other SQL
Server node.
It's like having two SQL Serverat the price of one.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
I like that.

Speaker 3 (56:28):
That is the thing.
Remember one thing If you areon-premises, this is only
possible if you have the SQLServer Enterprise SKU.
This means that only if youspend quite a lot of money.
This read-only replica does notwork if you have the standard
one.
That is one thing, and I knowthis because we have enabled

(56:50):
this.
We have some on-prem customerbig fishes that do have SQL
Server enterprises and we haveenabled this read-only replica
also in the on-premises.
So it is really an added valuein the online version to have
this read-only replica, Becauseyou're offloading all the loads,
let's say API.

(57:10):
If you have a lot of get, thoseare going and those are
redirected into the other node.

Speaker 2 (57:18):
My mind is racing with that.

Speaker 1 (57:20):
That's a lot to consider.

Speaker 2 (57:22):
That's a big one for anyone who works with any
development to understand theintent of what they're writing
and how it works to be to help,not necessarily cause some
performance issues with theusers.
Um, I I have more questionsthat I have.
Is there anything else to addto the performance key?

Speaker 1 (57:44):
I mean we can I know we can unpack performance for
days but I think from a businessperspective it's really hard to
maybe an edge case where youwould want to be on-prem but you
really have to be intentionalof wanting to be on-prem.
Or Business Central Onlinereally gives you a lot of this

(58:07):
flexibility and if you look atit from a business perspective
cost it just doesn't make sense.
If I was to make a decision ofwhich direction I'm going the
cost of saving long-term it'sgot to be Business Central
Online.
I just don't see it.

(58:29):
I mean, like I said, you guysmentioned a lot of the benefits
of maybe some of the on-premcapabilities and a little bit
more control, but you really gotto be intentional of staying in
it.

Speaker 4 (58:42):
Yes, I would say.
If there are customers who wantto stay on-prem, there are.
To me, from my experience,there are two maybe categories I
mentioned already mentioned.
One is big client, who runs bigtasks in the background and
they want to get maximumperformance.

(59:02):
Or maybe they have integrationswith internal in-house systems
on-premise and they don't wantto go in the cloud.
They have maybe their SQLstored procedures.
They run in the background andthere is another edge to it is
internet connection.
Not every client has completely100% stable internet connection

(59:27):
and sometimes they must beonline, uh well, just to be able
to do, to perform, to do anyjob.
Uh, in talking from theretailer perspective, we have
point of sale, pos terminalsrunning.
If it is online, you loseinternet connection, you lose
sales, your store doesn't work,it just stops uh, uh, okay, yeah

(59:52):
, of course we can talk about abackup connection, but sometimes
in some places internetconnection can be so unreliable
and unstable that users stayoffline for days, weeks, and I'm
not exaggerating.
Really it's a real customerpain.
There was a real customer pain.

Speaker 2 (01:00:10):
There was a case when their store was offline for a
week and they can't afford it,of course that's a very good
point to bring up that that wehadn't talked about is that the
business center requires astable internet connection, and
if you have locations that needto access or use the system if

(01:00:33):
they don't have, if they're in aremote area, or if they're in
an area where the internetconnection is not stable due to
the infrastructure, then onlinecould be challenging for them to
use, which, yeah I could seethat that that is a
consideration to have again touse between either or.

(01:00:56):
I had a lot of questions thatare coming to my mind as we were
talking about that, but we went.
I got a little sidetracked forit.
The application we talked about.
We have Wave 1, wave 2.
I'm going to jump a little bithere just because I like to get
these out.
You have all these updates withthe wave one, wave two and the

(01:01:16):
minor updates every month.
What is the update process?
To stay current with theapplication for online versus
on-prem?

Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
That's a super good question.
In the online version there isa cadence where you can apply
this update or upgrade and nowthat we have the so-called
flexible update cadence rightnow you might want to do this

(01:01:48):
once every five months.
So it is 2.5 per year if youwant to have this update cadence
.
Otherwise, microsoft, little bylittle, will kick in the
application update.
But it is important One thingit is the patching strategy If

(01:02:10):
there is a medium to a severeapplication bug.
But it is important One thingit is the patching strategy.
If there is a medium to a severeapplication bug, microsoft is
taking care of this and then itis deploying this through the
pipeline.
So this means that let's saythat now you are in minor update
26.3, and then you find outthat there is an application
problem, microsoft will fix itand then deploy it worldwide in

(01:02:32):
all 26, 23 environments.
So you will have this fixbetween one to seven days or so.
If you are on-premises and thiskind of problem eats you, then
you have to wait for the nextcumulative update.
So this means that if this onewe discover this by, let's say,

(01:02:55):
the first of this month, thenthe application update for the
on-premises version you have towait for September in order to
have this available, then youhave to pick it up and then you
have to deploy this yourselfavailable.
Then you have to pick it up andthen you have to deploy this
yourself.
That is one of the big goodieswhere the online version is

(01:03:15):
working far better andflawlessly compared to the
on-premises version.

Speaker 4 (01:03:21):
Big goody, which comes with a pinch of salt, I
would say, exactly one that wediscussed yesterday.
You're not in control of theseupdates completely allowed.
You have your and you don'teven know if it's going to be
applied next night.
Because if you're running yournight heavy job, your MRP
planning, your stock planning,aggregation, whatever it is, the

(01:03:45):
moment this patch comes in,your job stops, it's interrupted
, rolled back.
If you don't have a strategy,some kind of commit in the
middle, if it can't recover,you're losing your job, just
fails and stops, and you don'tknow when it's going to happen.

Speaker 3 (01:04:06):
Yeah, there are two kinds of fixes.
The application of fixes runstypically very rarely outside
the Windows update.
The platform hotfixes the onethat Alexander mentioned are
something in the bits in theplatform, in the DLL or in the
component version that are usedin the online version.
This one, since you have topatch one node at a time, you

(01:04:43):
cannot rely on the update windowbecause there are many
customers with different nightand if you're running mrp or
some business critical processthat it is very heavy and you're
forced to run it overnight,then maybe this one will
interrupt you.
And just to add on thealexander comment that it is, I
just fully support the.

(01:05:03):
The one that maybe is hittingyou.
It is stopping the queue andthen this one is not starting.
The worst things it is happensis that when it is eating and
then it is rolling back andstarting once again because the
task address is very resilient.
But when it starts and thenmaybe it spans from three, four,
five hours, then it goes whenall the users start working and

(01:05:25):
maybe if it is MRP it isblocking everything.
Then you have to try to stop it.
But the biggest advantage inDOLA, this is one of the biggest
advantages.
You just have to slightlymaintain or take care of when
the platform or application ofsuccess has to be deployed.

(01:05:47):
But this flexible update andthe fact that there is a
continuous update, this one itis a good thing.
Otherwise, on-premises, youhave to care about this by your
own.

Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
So you'd have to run platform and application updates
yourself?
Yeah, and you could.
Also you have a little morecontrol then on-prem, when those
updates get installed as well.
So it's it's with online.
Uh, those application hot fixesare sent to your environment as

(01:06:23):
they release them because of uh, each of those nodes is shared
by many customers, as you hadmentioned, and and they need to.
Well, they can't separate thecustomers that way.
I mean, if you have 50,000customers, you could have 50,000
variations of Windows.
So I don't think they have50,000 machines that they could
run that on.
And then for the applicationexcuse me, yes, for the

(01:06:44):
application updates they havethe monthly cadence, but now
they've changed the way you candelay it.
Updates they have the monthlycadence, but now they've changed
the way you can delay it, thedelay schedule, to give you some
more flexibility to know whenit is.
But eventually you will have toupdate, whereas if you have
on-prem you have some morecontrol if there is a reason why
you may not want to upgrade ata particular point.

(01:07:05):
That's the only struggle withthat is if you go too far behind
.
I think what it sounds like tome is it gets a little more
troublesome to get current right.
If you, if you stay close to it, you can get to it rather
quickly.
But if you defer stayingcurrent, it could be a little

(01:07:26):
more challenging.
And then, as you had mentioned,you have to up, you have to
apply those updates yourself atthat point, or somebody has to
do it for you, which couldinclude data migrations.
If the schema has changed orthere's some step that you have
to go through, so the upgradecould be.
There could be some timeinvolved as well, too, depending
upon the size of your system,am I correct?

Speaker 3 (01:07:49):
Yeah, that's correct.

Speaker 2 (01:07:51):
Okay, okay, I'm trying to just think of all
these things because, again,this is one of those questions
that, like I said, I get askedquite often.
Are there any other majordifferences or points to bring
between choosing to go on-premor online that come to light?

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
Are there differences in compliances too?

Speaker 2 (01:08:13):
That was the question I was going to ask, but not the
compliance.
You hit me, thank you, just Ihave to remember now what I was
going to ask.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
Cause we get that, I get but maybe it's related to
compliance.
Cause I get, we get thatquestion, so I at least I get
that question where like, okay,what's the compliances?

Speaker 3 (01:08:31):
I'm like oh and other things to decide.
It is where my data are, sopeople are thinking about the
security.
Actually, I'm thinking about,well, in the US.
It is also a very, verysensible argument.
But even in Italy, let's sayItaly, at the moment, it is
served with West Europe actually.
So we are in Netherlands thedata.

(01:08:52):
So it might be that sometimesyou want this in your own local
subsidiaries In Italy, there isa brand new data center in North
Italy that actually is in Milan, and we are just waiting in
order to move the cluster outfrom the West Europe and then
use it with North Italy, like ithappened, for example, for

(01:09:12):
Switzerland, for Norway, forGermany and other ones, where
the data is stored within thesame country.
That is the thing.
Another matter of choosingonline versus on-premises is the
security.
So people are asking quite alot of questions about how much

(01:09:35):
it is secure the online versioncompared to on-prem.
Then when they ask, I revert sohow much you are secure that
you are one, how many people youare one, two, three, four, five
, six people that are One, two,three, four, five, six people.
That are six people, 10 peoplein the IT department that are
securing your environment.
In Microsoft, there is apeloton of people only for the

(01:09:59):
security purposes and thesecurity of Business Central
Online.
It is really a matter thatcounts towards 50,000
environment all over the world.
So this security, it is takenserious quite, sometimes close
to the paranoid right, sometimesclose to the paranoid.
For example, you see this newfeature that it is using this

(01:10:23):
certificate validation.
It is always wants to okay, isthe certificate valid or not
valid?
This one it is not to make itjust take it just into small
consideration, but this one itis to keep the environment very,
very more secure and it is notsomething to say okay, now

(01:10:44):
you're restricting thecapabilities, no, we are making
the things more secure thecapabilities.

Speaker 2 (01:10:48):
No, we are making the things more secure, with the
security going to security youtalk about the security from the
application point of view andsomeone being able to access
your data.
I want to take that a stepfurther because and, chris,
that's where you came to,because my question was in
between the security and thecompliance is who has access to
the data?
That's another question.
So with on-prem, you cancontrol who has access to the

(01:11:10):
data.
That's another question.
So with on-prem, you cancontrol who has access to your
data from your infrastructure.
Who has access to your data orwho can see your data, based
upon security of your SQL server.
What about online?
What considerations are to makesure because that goes into
some compliance issues and alsosome security issues is who can

(01:11:32):
see my data?
So now I have my data storedonline somewhere and again, this
could be with.
This is a question for anyapplication.
That's online, right, it's notjust Business Central online,
because we are all just trustingthat we're putting our data in
the cloud somewhere and the datathat we're storing may be
sensitive.
It could be personalidentifying information, could
be banking information, could beall sorts of information like

(01:11:55):
that.
So now what's in place tocontrol that for online versus
on-prem?

Speaker 4 (01:12:07):
I don't know.
Let me see who exactly hasaccess from Azure, because it's
all stored somewhere in Azure.
I can say that nobody inMicrosoft development or support
team has access to customerdata for sure.
Even when you raise a supportticket to Microsoft because you
have problems with the data orsome issues, support team cannot

(01:12:30):
access this data, even fortroubleshooting or whatever.
They just don't have itsuccessfully.

Speaker 3 (01:12:36):
I can confirm this.
So they never, ever, resolvecases.
I remember I was in Lyon atDirections two years ago.
So the first, talking abouttelemetry, the first thing that
I told people it is that if youthink that Microsoft have access
to your data, microsoft doesn't.

(01:12:56):
And how they resolve theproblem, it is every single case
it is resolved throughtelemetry.
That is why I have used thiskind of metaphor of the iceberg
we just can see the peak of it,but behind the water there are
really terabyte and terabyte andterabyte and terabyte of data

(01:13:16):
every day that are sent intotelemetry, and every single area
server runtime, client runtime,application they have their own
specific telemetry signal.
Telemetry signals are, perdefinition, gdpr aware in Italy,
in Europe.

(01:13:38):
It means that they do notcontain PII personal identified
information Nowhere.
So there is no way thatMicrosoft can spoil up your bank
number or credit number.
Maybe other people does it,maybe your wife or the people
that are with you, but not theother ones.

Speaker 2 (01:14:00):
That's good.
Now that is a big concern forsome organizations that need to
validate that their data issecure with that, whether it be
data access controls and suchWell, Mr Duilio and Alexander, I
appreciate you taking the timeto speak with us today about
online and on-prem BusinessCentral, and also, Duilio, I'm

(01:14:26):
looking forward to seeing youagain this October.
Duilio and I are going to doCommunity.

Speaker 3 (01:14:31):
Summit, community Summit, north America.
I'm really excited.

Speaker 2 (01:14:34):
I'm really excited too.
We're doing another repeat, butimproved, because a lot of new
things are coming our way.
We're doing a session onPageScript in a Community Summit
, North America.
Duilio has a few other sessionsas well.
Ruma has it.

Speaker 3 (01:14:51):
You might be doing something on performance yes, um
, exactly, it is uh al profilingin the dynamic 365 business
central, a sort of csi of alcode that will be I hope they
have a big room for that.

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
I hope they have a big room for that.
I'll be there, so I'm lookingforward to you in october.
Thank you, it's uh alexander.
Will you be uh presentinganywhere soon?

Speaker 4 (01:15:18):
I don't think you're making it to orlando no, no, not
in orlando and not going to beat directions probably excellent
.

Speaker 2 (01:15:27):
No um, in the meantime, if anyone would like
to reach out to either one ofyou, would you mind telling us
what's the best way to contactyou?
Alexander?

Speaker 4 (01:15:36):
well, I think there is a guest intake form that I
need to fill.
Is it published?
Is contact published somewhere?

Speaker 2 (01:15:44):
yes, yes the guest intake form.
The guest information will belinked to each episode, so your
contact information that youprovide will be listed there and
they can contact you to thosemeans.

Speaker 3 (01:15:55):
Mr Duilio, sir, yes, you can contact me at
duiliotaccone that is my name.
Duiliotaccone ateos-solutionsit.

Speaker 2 (01:16:10):
Great.
Thank you both.
We appreciate you taking thetime to speak with us.
I truly appreciate that,because any time you spend doing
one thing, you're not spendingit doing another, and time is
something that you don't getback.
So I appreciate it and I lookforward to speaking with you
both again soon, and I'll talkwith you later.
Ciao, ciao.

Speaker 3 (01:16:28):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:16:29):
Ciao, bye.
Thank you, chris, for your timefor another episode of In the
Dynamics Corner Chair and thankyou to our guests for
participating.

Speaker 1 (01:16:41):
Thank you, brad, for your time.
It is a wonderful episode ofDynamics Corner Chair.
I would also like to thank ourguests for joining us.
Thank you for all of ourlisteners tuning in as well.
You can find Brad atdeveloperlifecom, that is
D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-Ecom, and youcan interact with them via

(01:17:04):
Twitter D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E.
You can also find me atmatalinoio, m-a-t-a-l-i-n-o dot
I-O, and my Twitter handle ismatalino16.
And you can see those linksdown below in their show notes.
Again, thank you everyone.

(01:17:25):
Thank you and take care.