Taking your enterprise management systems to the cloud is no longer a matter of “if” – it’s a matter of “when.”

It’s clear that, with rare exceptions, migrating your ERP to the cloud and outsourcing the associated infrastructure management is worthy for companies of all sizes for the following reasons:

• Reducing TCO: Total cost of ownership to keep your ERP running with high availability, performance, guarantees for disaster recovery and associated services tends to be substantially lower in a cloud environment (see MS Azure TCO Calculator).
• Ensure greater dedication to the business: without having to worry about infrastructure problems, your IT staff can focus on issues that really are connected to the development of your business and your competitiveness.

It turns out that the challenge is now different, and being in the cloud is only the first step. It’s no longer a question of optimizing the operation, but rather of being ahead of the market changes, Digital Transformation. To do so, your company must be able to connect to the tools that enable transformation: mobility, the Internet of Things (IoT), access and management of large amounts of data, AI algorithms and Machine Learning (ML).

There are two ways to get to the Digital Transformation

A difficult one (and expensive) and an easy one (and accessible). The difficult one involves several interfaces and the development of integrations to enable the consumption of services of different suppliers in different clouds, resulting in a bunch of specific code that will slow modifications that surely will be necessary in the future. The easy to use is a single, ready-to-use platform for the various cloud services already available – Microsoft Azure.

Microsoft Azure delivers dozens of cloud services that can be consumed by any application, including Digital Transformation enabling services such as:

• Platform for IoT, that captures, stores and makes information of devices connected to the cloud available;
• Cognitive services that allow you to interpret visual and audio information, transforming it into data (for example identification through image, identification of feelings through images, transformation of voice into text and vice versa);
• Intuitive tool for creating Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning models, with out-of-the-box algorithms and the possibility of specific development using the “R” language;
• Business Intelligence, with Power BI, a powerful tool for presenting and exploring the information collected;
• Mobility tools to make information available in user-built Apps (without IT interaction)

You can see that Microsoft Azure is much more than Data Centers and platform in the Cloud

Microsoft Azure is the Smart and Connected Cloud – just connect and consume those services. As Microsoft says, its goal with Microsoft Azure is the “Democratization of Artificial Intelligence”.

But for your company to benefit from these tools, you need to connect your business processes to Microsoft Azure. Don’t just take your ERP to the Cloud and keep it isolated. It’s precisely in this connection that you have the greatest competitive advantage of Microsoft Dynamics 365. Microsoft ERP (and CRM) is designed to be an integral part of Microsoft Azure. It has out-of-the-box Artificial Intelligence algorithms ready for use and allows new scenarios to be developed in a very agile way.

Some algorithms already available for use:

• Demand Forecasting, with predictive algorithms;
• Suggestionts for cross-selling in a retail environment;
• Facial recognition for customer identification in the store.

In short, it’s not enough to migrate to the cloud. Your business needs to connect to the Intelligent Cloud. Microsoft Dynamics 365 with Microsoft Azure is the only complete enterprise management platform that enables your business to do so in a fast, efficient and sustainable manner.