If you’ve been wondering whether your deployment of Microsoft Dynamics GP should be on-premises or in the cloud, have you considered the option of doing both? It doesn’t require two different versions of Microsoft Dynamics GP to run the web client and desktop client in the same office, on the same server, or even on the same workstation. Microsoft senior software engineer Brian Allrich delivered a session on Microsoft Dynamics GP mixed deployments at Convergence this year, and he repeated the session recently for GPUG. As he noted, the web client is not an all-in deployment, and organizations can and do deploy both the web and desktop clients.
Microsoft puts a lot of emphasis on security where the web client is concerned, but some organizations want to be as conservative as possible with their data security, and prefer an on-premises deployment of Microsoft Dynamics GP for that reason. Of course, the advantages of the web client are many. It saves internal hosting costs while generally providing for the same or better security measures, and it makes it easy to work remotely. As long as you have access to the internet, you have access to Microsoft Dynamics GP.
The benefits of the web client are realized even in a mixed deployment. Single sign-on enables users to go to the web client on their internet and already be logged on to Microsoft Dynamics GP. The web client can be accessed internally or externally, and there is no need for a virtual private network to access Microsoft Dynamics GP.
