Dime.Scheduler in 2024: Here's what you need to know

Since its conception in 2012, it has been a never-ending journey to make Dime.Scheduler the best possible scheduling add-on in the ERP space. Many thousands of hours of development, dozens of updates, and two major revisions of the architecture have brought us to the point where we are today. We are at the cusp of arguably the biggest transformation this company has ever gone through: we are about to embark on an era where we will be offering our software as a service. The market is ready for it, and so are we.

Starting from January 2024, Dime.Scheduler will be available as a service to new customers. What follows is an overview of what this means for our partners and customers. Certified partners can read more about all the upcoming changes on our partner zone.

📺 Read all about this major milestone, or join us for a webinar on February 22nd at 16:00 CET, where we'll showcase all the new features and changes in Dime.Scheduler cloud. Register for this webinar by clicking on this link.

What will change

The decision to offer Dime.Scheduler as a service was not taken lightly, although it was a rather easy one to make.

Until now, each customer had to allocate resources to deploy Dime.Scheduler on their infrastructure, and their ERP partner (i.e. our reseller) had to be trained to successfully implement it. Hosting, maintenance, software licenses, electricity, security, and more were all the customer's responsibility with the on-premises model. This proved to be time-consuming and error-prone. Too many external factors could compromise the proper functioning of Dime.Scheduler.

That is all about to change. We will take care of nearly everything, so partners and customers can focus on connecting their back-office system to Dime.Scheduler (and vice versa). Partners simply need to place an order on the customer's behalf on our partner zone, and a new Dime.Scheduler instance will be provisioned imminently.

This drastically reduces the lead time and effort required to get a solution up and running. It is also much more efficient since we can consolidate resources and scale up and out whenever necessary. All of it is monitored by automated tools and supervised by our specialized staff. The total cost of ownership, as a result, goes down dramatically compared to the on-premises hosting model.

What I have described to you is a textbook definition of SaaS. And that's the point: it should not feel or be any different than what you're used to with other cloud-based applications.

Licensing

Our licensing model is still based on the number of resources that the customer would like to manage. We offer different editions, each with a specific pack of resources. For instance, our ‘Starter’ pack allows the customer to plan up to 10 resources, while the ‘Team’ edition lets them manage up to 50 resources. Thus, the principles behind the licensing model have remained the same.

However, we have made a few adjustments to the licensing model. The most notable change is the incorporation of hosting and maintenance costs into the pricing, and we made the geographical map an optional module. This makes the base license more accessible for those who don't derive any added value from the geographical map.

Consult your ERP partner or contact our sales staff for the price list. Certified resellers can download the price list or use the price calculator on the partner zone.

Free trials

Free, 90-day trials will remain available, enabling the customer to experience the product's benefits firsthand.

There's one caveat. Free trials are issued only to customers and prospects of certified resellers who know how to connect the trial version to the back-office system. ERP partners that are not certified will have to participate in a partner certification program before they can benefit from this perk.

Alternatively, Dime Software can help to set up a trial. With a day's work, we should have just enough time to connect Dime.Scheduler to your back-office system, set it up to the required specifications, and get the people trained up.

Dime.Scheduler is plug and play, but only for those who know the product. It is especially important to have a trained person consult with the customer since we're dealing with the backbone of their IT landscape here.

Compatibility

I hope it is abundantly clear that it is only the hosting model that will change. A frequently asked question is whether Dime.Scheduler SaaS supports on-premises versions of Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. The answer to that is yes. We support all versions of BC, and NAV is supported until NAV 2009 R2.

However, new investments in our standard connectors for MS Dynamics NAV/BC are done for BC alone.

What about on-prem Dime.Scheduler?

We have come to a fork in the road. Hundreds of customers are using Dime.Scheduler today, and we want them to be rest assured that the on-prem version of Dime.Scheduler will remain supported for the time being. Support is limited to security patches and bug fixes to keep the lights running. New investments will be made to the cloud version only.

We are determined to encourage our existing customers to transition to the cloud. For those on perpetual licenses, we have taken inspiration from the successful approach of Microsoft and will offer our own 'bridge to the cloud'. The terms and conditions are documented in our partner zone. Customers on subscription licenses will smoothly transition to the cloud, with billing continuing under the new plan.

Later in the year, when our tooling and migration processes are ready, we will migrate the first batch of existing customers to the cloud.

New customers will be admitted to the cloud version. We will not issue new licenses for on-premises versions anymore—except for existing customers who want to upgrade to the latest version.

New reseller program

The time and effort required to get Dime.Scheduler hooked up to an ERP system have been noticeably reduced with Dime.Scheduler cloud. Consultants no longer need to acquire new (system administration) skills to implement Dime.Scheduler, which should lower the threshold to become a certified partner.

For those ERP partners that are not interested in spending time becoming acquainted with the software, there is an alternative: the non-certified or offering reseller. This lightweight program allows you to offer Dime.Scheduler to your customers, leaving the heavy lifting such as implementation and support to Dime Software or a certified reseller or trusted associate.

Upwards and onwards

A year of extremely hard work is about to come to fruition. We take great pride in what we've accomplished, and we can't wait to finally launch Dime.Scheduler 'as a service'.

On behalf of Dime Software, I want to express our sincere thanks to all of our partners for their constructive feedback. They've had a significant impact on this cloud offering, and we couldn't have done it without them.

Here's to a successful 2024!

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