Everyone today is aware that we are in the
“it was clouds“…and I’m sorry to say it
that anyone who doesn’t see it this way has a serious problem distorted reality.
About 4 years ago, Microsoft told us
partners that we had to “change the chip” and they showed us those graphs
impressive with exponential curves based on survey data from Gartner And IDC
on the cloud market.
People began to talk about very strange things, with examples like that.
graphics and demonstrations such as the now famous “pizza-as-a-service”:
Everything began to revolve aroundservice-oriented architecture”.
A new reality
As I said, our reality has changed. In Spain, almost the
All companies are SMEs and there are more “Ps” than “Ms”. Moreover,
Following the so-called “crisis”, there are many people who, without further ado,
alternatives, they opted for self-employment.
Starting from this scenario: Who today does a
major investment to get your Management System up and running?
I’m not saying that the “classic” business model, where
consultants performed service projects for weeks until they were completed or
much less, but we are talking about a lower market share,
compared to years ago. I mean, it’s pretty much limited to
medium and large companies and those who have been lucky enough to opt for
some subsidy.
It is clear that a model is needed in which the customizations are reduced Yes Deployments are fast and repeatable
and easily updatable. Decidedly, lower costs to cover needs
reality of our market.
Having said that, I would like to expose you what is “multi-tenant” and why it makes more sense now that
Never.
What is “multi-tenant”?
If we stick to the most earthly definition (read Wikipedia),
we found this:
<
multiple or multitenancy in computing corresponds to a principle of
software architecture in which a single instance of the application is located
runs on the server, but serves multiple clients or organizations
(owner or instance). This model differs from architectures with
multiple instances where each organization or customer has their own
installed instance of the application. With a role architecture
multiples, the application can virtually partition your data and files
configuration so that each client has a virtual instance adapted to its own
requirements. Some experts consider multiple ownership a factor
decisive factor of the cloud computing paradigm>>
From my point of view, this is a very clear definition and
correctness of the concept.
The “multi-tenant” in
Microsoft Dynamics NAV
This new deployment option was introduced in NAV in its release
version 2013 R2, thus allowing its deployment in Azure.
The main foundation is to separate the “objects of”.
application”, i.e. those common to all companies, of
specific and particular “data” of each of them.
This means that when you run a development or a
I will only do this once and all companies will have given access
that share application objects.
Obviously the advantages are very obvious:
- I reduce
maintenance costs: logically, when implementing developments a
In one fell swoop, I significantly reduce the maintenance costs of multiple devices
platforms for multiple businesses. - I protect
my intellectual property: something we sometimes don’t notice, but don’t do
It’s banal. When programming in Microsoft Dynamics NAV, all code is fine
embedded in the database. Therefore, unless it is an “add-on”,
all customizations and custom developments are accessible to anyone
partner or customer with development license. Obviously this is another one
Independent debate and opinions are very diverse on the topic. I
Personally I believe that this is only a part, since it is behind everything
For development there is “corporate knowledge”. - Further
customers, greater profitability: once I have made the “investment” in my infrastructure
and my developments, adding new customers is almost a procedure. My profitability
It will increase significantly as we serve more customers.
We could make this list even longer, but I’ll consider it
“the idea” in general terms the
We already have
That’s not all… what
does it change with NAV 2016?
In the 2016 NAV, as many of you already know, the
possibility to createextensions“, to expand
functionality and with the philosophy of respecting the original code. and the good
is that it is applicable both to classic “on-premise” scenarios and to multi-tenant scenariosthat means,
I can enable these extension packages for specific tenants or for
all my tenants.
It is true that there are still limits and that there are users
who complain about this, but let’s think about the great change in philosophy that will surely happen
It will mark a turning point in the history of the product. The main
The difference with “classical development” is that the
changes to the original code and instead use “Events C/AL” to expand and
customize objects.
Managing the distribution of these packages (which are
.navx), we will do this with PowerShell, which at this point is always
We have it in the “top 5” of the list of most used applications in Windows 10 🙂
Graphically the concept would be more or less this:
In a NAV environment
In 2015 we would have 1 server for each custom NAV solution:
In a NAV environment
2016, we can have a single server with multiple customizations thanks to
Extensions:
To conclude, I will give a brief introduction on
how the extensions work, which I hope is clarifying.
How do i
extensions?
The extensions are, in simplified terms, i
applying objects and “delta objects” at runtime for a
specific combination of an extension pack and a tenant. When
publishes an extension to a NAV distribution, what it does is compile the file
objects compared to the “application objects” database (which we talked about
first in the post). This way, when the extension is installed on
a tenant, this association is stored and the database schema is created
corresponding. At runtime, Microsoft Dynamics NAV simply
loads the associated objects for that extension and the tenant (the combination of
Both).
You can publish multiple extensions to a distribution.
NAV and, in multitenant environments, install any combination of extensions
published for each tenant, as we could see in the graph above. To the
Ultimately, what it offers us is a high degree of choice of features and
while maximizing existing hardware and management overhead.
I will delve deeper into the extension model and its management
next posts. I trust that the publication was yours.
interest.
Greetings, Miguel Llorca.
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