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One Dynamics One Platform
An article written by: Tobias Lång
Convergence across Dynamics 365 apps has been a hot topic for years. Still, with the recent TechTalk series, One Dynamics One Platform, the pieces suddenly come together, providing a clear picture of how Microsoft anticipates the journey and the key investment areas. More importantly, why is it important for customers to adopt Dynamics 365?
Microsoft’s vision is to enable the converged experience across ERP- workloads such as Dynamics 365 Finance & SCM and Customer Engagement apps built on Power Platform. This might sound simple, but due to the legacy of the ERP and CRM workloads, which have been built on different technologies for +20 years and use different tooling for development, administration, and UX, it is actually a gigantic task. Microsoft has been working on this for years and still anticipates this as a multiyear journey.
Investment areas for One Dynamics One Platform (ODOP) have been broken down into addressing the following vital personas:
Source: Microsoft
One Developer
Hotwiring the developer experiences across ERP- and CRM- workloads providing a single virtual image, already pre-populated with all necessary components for developing across both Dynamics 365 Finance & SCM and Power Platform components. In the past, this required significant work only to get the developer machines up and running, requiring multiple competencies across various tools. Now, one could instead focus on creating business value for the customers instead of spending endless hours configuring an integrated environment form scratch.
One Admin
Harmonizing the administration experience by transitioning all administration activities into a single platform powered by the Power Platform Admin Center (PPAC) rather than today, where ERP- admins work in a separate tool called Lifecycle Services Portal (LCS). This will increase transparency since all environments will be available, and it will be possible to link from a single experience. Moreover, it limits the need to adopt different toolsets depending on which Dynamics 365 app to manage.
One User
Transitioning from a scattered UX experience consisting of multiple form factors such as Canvas Apps, Model-Driven Apps, and Dynamics 365 Finance & SCM (F&SCM) apps into a cohesive experience. Moreover, one extends the flexibility even further when embedding apps where new scenarios are activated, such as embedding F&SCM forms into Customer Engagement apps. One use case is embedding return orders from D365 SCM into the D365 Customer Service app, limiting the need for complex integrations.
One Insights
Independent of the Dynamics 365 app, data should be able to export in near real-time to an Azure Data Lake powered by Synapse Analytics for materializing views according to the Common Data Model- format. Moreover, unlocking various analytics scenarios, such as virtual- or physical data warehouse capabilities and/or data lakehouse architectures. Although various analytical patterns have been available for quite some time, Synapse Link for Dataverse is being brought forward as the primary investment area for democratizing data across Dynamics 365 workloads.
Source: Microsoft
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Are you in need of an advisor to plan your One Dynamics One Platform journey, we have vast experience on the topic, so do not hesitate to contact us at contact@engagenow.com!
Written by:
Tobias Lång
CTO
Head of Advisory services
