Is Dynamics 365 available on-premises?
By Emil Björk · Microsoft business apps consultant, Gothenburg
Only Business Central still offers an on-premises deployment option. Finance and Operations and every Dataverse-based CE app (Sales, Customer Service, Field Service) are cloud-only — there is no on-premises version of those, and Microsoft has not signalled any plan to bring one back. If on-premises is a hard requirement, Business Central is the only product in the family that can meet it.
This wasn't always true — the products that became today's Finance and Operations and CE apps had on-premises editions in earlier eras (AX and CRM on-premises, respectively). Microsoft has since consolidated those into cloud-only SaaS products, leaving Business Central as the one holdout with a genuine on-premises option, largely because of its NAV heritage and the installed base that still runs that way.
Anyone evaluating the product family with an on-premises requirement should treat that requirement as an immediate filter: it points at Business Central specifically, or a non-Microsoft alternative, not at 'Dynamics 365' broadly.
Go deeper
- Business Central on-premises vs SaaSThe real differences between Business Central on-premises and the SaaS (online) deployment — features, customisations, costs.
- What is Business Central?A practical introduction to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central — the SaaS ERP for small and mid-sized businesses.
- Business Central vs Finance and OperationsWhen Business Central is the right ERP, when you've outgrown it, and how the move to Dynamics 365 Finance and Supply Chain Management actually goes.