Cloud runtime for finance and operations and Dataverse application development
Important
This content is archived and is not being updated. For the latest documentation, go to Microsoft Dataverse Developer Guide. For the latest release plans, go to Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Cloud for Industry release plans.
| Enabled for | Public preview | General availability |
|---|---|---|
| Users, automatically | 
Sep 8, 2023 |
- |
Business value
Partners and developers can create applications that can access backend apps like Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations and frontend cloud-deployed services like Dynamics 365 Sales, Marketing, and Service.
Feature details
As part of the transformation from on-premises to cloud-hosted traditional backend systems, such as ERP and the explosion of novel cloud-based customer experience frontend applications, customers are increasingly discovering scenarios where integrating information from both sides provides exponential benefits in terms of customer value, process innovation, and enterprise alignment.
Microsoft is uniquely positioned to deliver a compelling story for features that span across the traditional enterprise silos. Our portfolio of mature frontend and backend applications and our leading Azure and AI capabilities can be game changers for enterprises embracing the next level of digital transformation.
A set of robust developer tools that enable cross-cutting scenarios is a key component of the value Microsoft brings to the table. We can meet developers where they are and provide a common set of infrastructure, APIs, SDKs, and tools to radically accelerate the development of applications that run the whole enterprise gamut of backend and frontend systems. The Visual Studio integration of Dataverse with Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations apps is a key part of this strategy. Visual Studio will streamline the developer experience for both Customer Engagement and Finance and Operations apps developers alike by removing the need for a local virtual machine (VM) and enabling development that targets cloud instances with both Dataverse and finance and operations apps preconfigured and ready to work together.
This feature will allow developers to create Finance and Operations applications against a normal cloud-deployed Finance and Operations app runtime instead of a Finance and Operations app instance running in a VM. Visual Studio installed anywhere can connect to a Finance and Operations app development environment in the cloud, which in turn, is paired with a Dataverse instance. This feature is also a step towards eliminating cloud-hosted VMs.
See also
Unified developer experience for finance and operations apps (docs)