Directions ASIA 2021 has just ended with its keynotes, Q&A and sessions from Microsoft. Since only a month has passed after the BC Launch Event (watch the recordings for 2021w1 release here), there is little news to share for those who follow the release events. I will try to focus on my personal findings that I found new at Directions ASIA and that revolve around upgrades to Business Central:
Migrations to BC cloud are up
Microsoft has recorded 323 unique migrations to BC cloud that were using cloud migration tool in the past 30 days. Majority of those migrations were performed from BC v14 on-premise which means that most of the customers are upgrading from older versions of Dynamics NAV to BC v14 to BC cloud/SaaS. Only a handful are migrating from Dynamics GP or SL or from BC v15-17.
Migration tool will become extensible
The cloud migration tool that we use for migrating from older versions of Business Central to Business Central Cloud/SaaS will become extensible starting 2021 Wave2 (October release). What does this mean for you? If you had data that you wanted to migrate from Dynamics GP and you could not because of limitations in migration tool – you will be able to overcome that soon. Partners will be able to add their own functionality while Microsoft will focus on speed.
Migration to cloud upper limit change
Previously we had 80 Gb per database limit AND 30 Gb per company limit when migrating from on-premise to cloud using the cloud tool. Now there is only one limit – 80 Gb per database. It was emphasized that this limit is only a warning – you can contact Microsoft and you will be able to migrate bigger databases at ease.
Also the issue of migrating large tables to extension tables should be gone by now. Previously you would run into issues if you wanted to migrate a Dynamics GP table of >1Gb but it can now be migrated safely.
Migration to cloud in batches – when recommended?
Microsoft has invested a lot of time analyzing the errors that Partners receive when using the migration to cloud tool. One of the findings they had was that the migration tool sometimes tends to break when Partners try to migrate more then 25 companies in one batch. If you want to safely migrate a database to BC cloud version – migrate it in batches of 20-25 companies.
Migration incentives / discounts – to be extended
It was hinted that the 40% discount when migrating from perpetual (and on-prem) licenses to CSP will be extended beyond 2021 June 30th. It’s not official yet, nor fully confirmed.
RIP Intelligent Cloud Insights
The Inteligent Cloud Insights will not be accessible from the menu anymore – it will be split into different areas and some of the numbers can still be found.
The session recording will be available from May 10th at https://directions4partners.com/