Cloud Managed Services for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central on SaaS

Cloud Control is Tecman’s managed service for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central environments in the cloud. It focuses on keeping your system stable, secure and running as expected by proactively managing updates, monitoring performance and overseeing your cloud setup.

Rather than reacting when something goes wrong, Cloud Control is designed to reduce risk through planning, visibility and ongoing oversight of your Business Central environment.

Your Business Central support is there to help with problems in your day-to-day business use of your software. Cloud Control focuses on the health of your Business Central environment, including update planning and management, monitoring and performance oversight.

Support and Cloud Control play two different, but complimentary roles for your business.

Keeping your Business Central environment up to date is an important part of maintaining performance, stability and access to new features. While many updates are routine, they still benefit from being planned and managed carefully, particularly in environments with extensions or integrations.

Cloud Control provides a structured, proactive approach to managing updates within Microsoft’s update window, meaning changes are prepared, checked and introduced in a controlled way. Most of the time this simply means smoother updates and better visibility. On the occasions where something doesn’t behave as expected, having Cloud Control in place provides reassurance that the right support is already there to address it before it impacts your live system.

Microsoft brings new minor updates every month and major updates twice a year. These bring great new features to your business system. However, what Microsoft doesn’t do is schedule those updates around your busy trading times and on top of that, Microsoft’s update windows can change!

The last thing you want is an update to hit right when you really need access to your system or to find out that the latest update has caused havoc with your additional extensions and apps and has broken your live system. That’s where Cloud Control can help.

Plus, you’ll get access to a live webinar for each release to help you get up to speed with what’s new and we’ll even monitor your system’s performance and storage. Being proactive with your updates means you’ll always be on top of any changes, even if Microsoft change their dates.

Not everything – and that’s intentional. We’ll take care of testing your extensions (exactly which extensions depends on your Cloud Control tier), for every major update (and minor for certain tiers) we’ll set up a Cloud Control sandbox and run the right technical checks (for example, making sure the update applies cleanly and supported extensions remain compatible).

However, because every Business Central setup is different, we can’t test every end-to-end process the way your team uses it day-to-day.

Once your sandbox is ready, we’ll ask you to run through your key ‘must work’ processes and sign off that everything looks good for your business. If anything doesn’t behave as expected, we’ll work with you to investigate and advise on the best next step – so you go into the live update window with confidence.

Sandbox management extends beyond the core Cloud Control remit. As part of the Cloud Control service, Tecman creates and manages sandboxes aligned to the Microsoft release cycle to support testing prior to live deployment.

Customers retain full access to their environment and are responsible for any additional sandboxes they create. Tecman typically only manages update sandboxes, with any extended sandbox support depending on the Cloud Control tier.

Any sandboxes created via Support or Business as Usual are managed by the team that created them and should have a clearly defined purpose.

Cloud Control provides flexibility around when your update takes place. The available update windows, including days and times, are defined by your chosen service tier.

Tecman will provide a formal proposed update date, however if the proposed date does not suit your business, we will work with you to agree the most appropriate alternative within the boundaries of your service tier that still works with Microsoft's update window.

There could be several things playing havoc with your Business Central system, one of them being lots of unnecessary data that’s slowing your environment down

Cloud Control monitors your system performance and storage, plus depending on your chosen tier we’ll also provide active monitoring and full housekeeping. This means that if you get closer to your storage limits, we’ll help you tidy up data you don’t need to bring that storage back down. Or if your system performance doesn’t look quite right, we can give you a heads up and even help you get to the bottom of why.

No, monitoring doesn’t mean we’re looking at the content of your business data. Instead, it’s focused on system usage and storage. For example, we may identify where large volumes of files are being stored and provide guidance on what could be safely removed or managed through retention policies.

We also use telemetry to understand how Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is being used at a feature level. This helps us spot under-utilised areas, highlight useful new functionality and support ongoing health checks as part of business as usual consultancy. We don’t review financial records, customer data or other sensitive information.

Tecman is ISO 27001:2022 certified, with our security and operational controls independently audited against recognised international standards. This means your systems are always monitored responsibly, securely and in line with best practice.