7 Reasons To Be Excited About Microsoft Dynamics Business Central 2021 Release Wave 1
Microsoft just released the latest version of Dynamics 365 Business Central and it is packed with a host of new, expanded features that improve performance, reduce licensing costs, and enhance its flexibility and ROI.
2021 release wave 1 (aka BC 18) also puts more control into the hands of the customer and makes it easier than ever to make the decision to move to the cloud.
Here are 7 of the top new features that are sure to grab your attention:
Reason #1: Licensing Changes That Make BC More Accessible
Application Builder and Solution Developer are being deprecated from Business Central version 15 forward. Access to tools governed by these products is now available to all customers. Visual Studio Code as well as the AL Extension for Visual Studio Code is freely downloadable.
Access to the upgrade toolkit of the base application will now be included in all customer licenses for Essentials and Premium users. All customers will have their licensed permission updated to reflect these changes. This will simplify and improve the way partners administer tenants, but may change the way administrators manage licensing and permissions.
Reason #2: A Compelling Reason To Move To The Cloud
Microsoft is putting their money where their mouth is when it comes to wanting everybody to move to SaaS, offering more file space per user, less expensive storage options, and file compression.
Additional storage space that used to be priced at $40 per gigabyte of disk space are now down to $10 per GB. And adding 100GB used to cost $4,000 is now down to $500, making it much more affordable.
Figure 1 – Dynamics 365 Business Central version 18 new storage pricing
In addition, Microsoft is compressing data stored in the cloud automatically, reducing the data footprint by as much as 60% to 70%. So, SaaS storage is not only more affordable, but users require less of it!
Reason #3: Flexibility Around Installing Updates
Minor Updates are released every month and major updates releases every six months. Now, instead of being applied automatically, the customer can delay the release by three weeks for Minor updates and up to 60 days for major updates, giving the customer time to perform testing before the new release is applied.
Reason #4: Easier Reporting
Making small changes to base Microsoft reports, such as adding a field or changing the layout, used to present a problem. The new report extension object makes it easier for customers to make small changes in the base Microsoft reports.
Reason #5: Adding Keys To Base Tables
Partners can now add keys (indexes) to base tables and extension tables, a critical feature for improving performance.
Reason #6: Improved System Performance
Microsoft has greatly improved application performance, including the following impressive statistics:
- 20% faster to open the Role Center page
- 98% faster to post to the Payment Journal
- 40% faster posting background document batches
- 3-5x reduction of SQL reads with Dynamics 365 Sales integration
- Web Services up to 25% faster
- API performance up to 5-6x faster
- Report performance up to 36x faster
Reason #7: Faster Onboarding
Onboarding improvements enable customers to become productive faster, with a simplified company setup wizard and the use of checklists which allow customers to complete the last-mile setup by themselves.
Upgrade to Business Central!
There are many more software improvements in this release. Check out the Business Central 2021 release wave 1 page for the full list of what’s new and what’s coming.
For a personalized demonstration of the latest release, contact the Business Central experts at ArcherPoint.