The Microsoft Power Platform

(This article was originally posted to Gravity Software's Grow Your Business Blog.)

Gravity Software? (Gravity) is built on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Platform (aka CRM). Why should you be concerned about how your accounting product is built? Let’s take a step back and look at the fundamentals of creating an accounting application. There are two main directions to take when designing and building a business software application:

Traditional – Most applications are built from the ground up with a propitiatory platform and application code. Usually everything above the database is designed, created and managed by the one company. There is only one real upside here: as a designer, you have total freedom to create any design you want (good or bad). Most developers like this approach because they have total freedom. For the end user, there should be many concerns:

• Investment – The developer must spend money on the lower level platform as well as the application. This limits what they can invest in the application.
• Proprietary Platform – Everything in their platform is unique and known only to the developer. For example, they will have to create integration points (APIs) for any 3rd party to work with the application. These will usually be unique and not well documented, limiting extensibility and integration capabilities.
• Dependence – Users become dependent on a single company for maintaining the full stack, platform, application and sometimes the data center. This is a lot for one company to do and provides a single point of failure.
• Limitations – Software developers are generally in the business of developing applications, not platforms. With limited expertise and resources, platforms, applications are often based on old and limiting technology. The proprietary platform gets old fast, limiting the tools and functions an end user must work with.

Platforms - In the last ten years, there strong commercial platforms for software companies have emerged to use in building scalable, functional and reliable applications. These platforms are maintained by large well-funded organizations that specialize in building strong, open and well documented platforms. Gravity is written on the Dynamics 365 platform, which is developed, maintained and managed by Microsoft in the Microsoft Azure data center. There are many advantages to using Microsoft’s tools:

• Optimize Investments – Gravity can focus on true application development without having to worry about the platform and not having to manage a data center. Every time Microsoft improves the platform, Gravity users can take advantage of it. Since the platform runs in the Azure data center managed by Microsoft, we get the advantages of a world class data center without any of the work. Guaranteed 99.999% up-time with military grade security.
• Reduced Risk – With Microsoft powering Gravity, end users have less risk of service interruptions, less risk of viruses or data center intrusions. Microsoft has over 4 four million users on the Dynamics platform and a global reach with data centers around the world.
• Open Platform - Microsoft has designed and documented the Dynamics platform to be open and standards based. This makes it easy for application developers to use the tools that are best suited for their application and provides out of the box integration to many key business tools like Microsoft Office, Power BI and AI engines. An open, well documented platform has significantly less limitations than a proprietary platform.
• Technology – With significant investment by Microsoft in developing the strongest platform in the market for business applications, Gravity users are always on the newest and most advanced technology available. With tools like Microsoft Flow or Power BI, Gravity users can easily and inexpensively extend their applications without the need for expensive developers.

With the combination of Gravity’s advanced accounting features and Microsoft’s Dynamics platform, users will have the best innovative technology, most reliable applications with robust accounting features to help your company grow. Learn more and schedule your online demo today! Gravity Software – My business is connected. Is yours?