Microsoft Dynamics SL vs. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure

For a small to mid-size business, MS Dynamics SL is effective. We are capable of managing our finances with a very low risk of error. We have worked with MS Dynamics for almost 15 years and have more than doubled the size of our business in that time with very few issues from the program. We have exponentially increased our revenue and reporting demands and have found SL to be very dependable and stable. The program does have the occasional glitch and those are sometimes outside of the realm of expertise of our IT department. SL support is excellent, but their timeliness is not as urgent as ours.

Incentivized

As per our usage Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for almost 6 years hosting 500 + customers I can say its well suited application for any small scale to larger scale application as it can handle that capacity and provide more reliable cloud service only if you need any messaging service like pub/sub or sqs better to consider other services.

Incentivized

• Provides flexibility for complex project based cost accounting
• Strong and flexible allocation processer for cost allocations, markups, and pricing
• A "Flexible Billing" module under the project controller series that allows for multiple billing formats ranging from fixed price schedule of values, T&M or Cost Plus, and scheduled billing.
• Flexible reporting with options using Crystal Reports, SSRS, a Quick Query tool, and ability to tie into MS Office tools such as MS Access and MS Excel
• Tight integration with Financials, but also the ability to integrate with modules such as Sales Order, Inventory, and Field Service
• Customization abilities ranging from a VBA (visual basic for application) foundation to allow customizing existing forms to the ability to use the SDK (Software Development Kit) to build more complex customizations that integrate with Dynamics SL.

Incentivized

• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure has a generous free tier, moreso than other hyperscalers, with an always-free tier that guarantees certain products are always free
• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure allows you to size VMs with differing combinations of CPU and RAM, which is contrary to other hyperscalers that have specific pre-defined combinations only
• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure regularly provides free certification exam offers

Incentivized

• Reporting in the Project module is lacking functionality. I understand that most companies have specific needs when it comes to tracking project information but the standard reports are not good.
• I would recommend a product like Management Reporter that is for Projects only. Project Reporter should allow users to pull in all Project related data into reports.
• Fixing suspended batches. Obviously all of us users have experienced this mess. SL knows what needs to be corrected and there could be some step by step fixes in a separate repair module to do the steps we do in Query Analyzer.

Incentivized

• Navigating the UI takes lots of getting used to. It reminds me of older GCP (just to get used to where everything is).
• Permission for different things always seemed to be more difficult than it really needed to be. Once you got them set up you were good but updating anything or creating new permissions for just about anything took longer than I thought it should.
• Based on how the buttons were laid out, it was pretty easy to delete all of your DNS records, and backing them up was not as intuitive as I'd like with the UI, but it was easy to do using a script.

Incentivized

Unfortunately, Dynamics' lack of ability to smoothly integrate with our CRM system is causing us to look at other solutions. The efficiencies that we gain by using Dynamics for our day to day accounting are lost in the constant headaches of getting sales quotes to import properly into the system for invoicing. Another major issue for us has been budgeting and reporting. We currently do all of our budgeting and board reporting in Excel, which is too time consuming and inefficient, especially when a system as robust as Dynamics should easily be able to handle this relatively simple task.

Incentivized

Reliability: Very dependable and stable OCI services have been for the business operations.Performance: The speed and efficiency of OCI in meeting their computing and storage needs.Scalability: The ease and effectiveness of scaling resources up or down to accommodate changing demands.Security: The robustness and effectiveness of OCI's security features in protecting their data and applications.

Incentivized

I rate it a 10 because we have removed the fields we don't need so users can really crank the data into the system. The software was designed for the professional services firm in mind but does a tremendous job for construction firms and "blended" companies that are both distribution firms but project centric as well. Perhaps they drop ship inventory to a project where their employees or subs need to work on a project for example.

Incentivized

The services & products in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure needs more improvement to beat other Cloud service providers. The price is good & Security processes are good. We are requiring to put more effort in supporting this Oracle Cloud Infrastructure than other Cloud service providers. Probably better ways are there but is not super easy to find or not super available

We have had only one unplanned outage for 2 hours in the last 30 months. We shut down for 30 min to 1 hour once a month, but that is for Microsoft OS updates to the servers. Being a 24/7 world wide operation, the reliability is really important. We do get an 8 hour window on the weekend that we can be down for a short period to install Microsoft Dynamics SL updates, but we do not have many of those. On our last version upgrade, we shut the users out at 9:30 am and were fully operational in less than 6 hours. The upgrade was New SQL server, New SL server and 2 new Citrix servers.

Incentivized

Yeah sometimes we had to face unplanned outages due to underlying infrastructure issues, so not every time,e but once in a while we face issues with availability. But the good thing is we have redundancy with DR setup and multi region so we can manage.

Incentivized

From the start, I was surprised by response times and image quality accessing windows VMs with RDP. GCP, Azure and -many offerings in AWS- don't perform this speed. Also, that's evident in the quality of Infrastructure Management Team, because I just received one warning regarding a region failure, what confirms that's a mature platform.

Incentivized

Support is only used when needed, so unfortunately ,they get all the odd issues. It's a difficult business, but Microsoft and our firm do a great job of meeting customer needs. We get routine feedback that our support services are very good.

Incentivized

Overall it is amazing, there is always room for improvement. We have weekly updates that tend to slow the program used more and more. We had to change some reports within Oracle because the others wouldn’t load. This is tied to our payroll and the delays are causing many time constraint issues and panic. We have to create a new report when one breaks. Otherwise awesome!

Incentivized

Effective training provided, much data productivity while doing training

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detailed and easy to understand.

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Just to let it take its course. The implementation for me once I became a part of my former organization was pretty seamless. Just get to know the basics and call the support team to ask questions if you need help on an issue, should they arise. They are ready, willing, and able to help!

Incentivized

Easier way to implement, vary much supportive way doing the implementation

Incentivized

Of the comparable mid-range ERP systems, Dynamics SL competes at the lower end based on price, but also above the high-end based on flexibility, data, and reporting. Being able to stay with the same core accounting from a $100 million dollar company to a $3 billion dollar company shows the range of capabilities.

Incentivized

We used Microsoft Azure and Docker earlier and faced some difficulties like Microsoft Azure and Docker. Occasionally, the generation of large images can delay deployment. It is also necessary for me to admit that Microsoft Azure and Docker have a somewhat steep learning curve. Proper paperwork needs to be there. Docker has issues with performance on a number of platforms. On the other hand, OCI is easy to deploy and easy to understand.

Incentivized

was not part of initial purchase team. Anyways, i think unit pricing and billing frequency is good compared to other Cloud service providers, when it comes to Cloud Capital expenditure & Operational expenditure. Would be more interested in exploring more options where customers can get more cost relaxations on trying out new cloud services in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for example a new App or a feature

Since the backbone of the database is MS SQLServer, the database can be easily scaled.

Incentivized

We have hosted around 500 + customers on this cloud so till day not faced any major issues, so we can use it for any kind of products and it can hold the load and easily scale based on need.

Incentivized

Services & Infra wise is ok to use & host applications & services. Security wise also good for a Cloud service provider. It is a interesting area to explore & using it for day to day needs can be further improvised in future probably. Modern day Services like AI and Machine learning could be improved

• More time is spent on manipulating reports which can and should be automated.
• Lack of electronic invoicing process and other green technology features creates more cost on printing and storage costs.
• The lack of a user friendly interface requires more training and a bigger learning curve for staff.

Incentivized

• Oracle Cloud helps us build and deploy apps quickly, getting our products out the door faster.
• With real-time insights from Oracle Cloud, we can give customers personalized experiences that boost satisfaction.
• Migrating to Oracle saves us cash on hardware and maintenance, which we can use for innovation and growth.

Incentivized