Procede Excede on Azure means Procede runs the Excede server, database, backups, and upgrades in Microsoft’s cloud, while your dealership still owns the internet circuits, counter PCs, scanners, Wi-Fi, logins, and Microsoft 365 accounts at every store. Procede guarantees 99.9% uptime for Excede Hosted Services. That number covers Procede’s side of the line, and this guide covers yours.
Last updated: October 12, 2026
A dealer friend of mine wrote a book about finding your one thing. His one thing was selling and servicing cars, and when I read it I realized mine was a lot less glamorous. I take care of the IT. That’s been the whole job at Helion Technologies for nearly 30 years, and it’s why I pay attention when a DMS company decides what its own one thing is.
Procede Software made that call a while ago. Its one thing is Excede, and with Excede Hosted Services it’ll run the server side for you in Microsoft Azure so your stores don’t have to. I think that’s a good deal for a lot of truck dealers. I mean that. It also leaves a list of work that nobody at Procede is going to do for you, and most of the dealers I talk to have never seen that list written down. So I wrote it down.
If you want the day-to-day version of who fixes what, our page on IT support for Procede Excede stores has it, and the wider picture of IT for heavy truck dealerships lives on a page of its own. This one is about the move to Azure and what your stores need in place around it.
What Procede Excede on Azure Actually Means
Procede Excede on Azure is Excede Hosted Services, the option where Procede Software hosts a dealership’s Excede database and web applications on Microsoft Azure instead of on a server in the dealer’s building. Procede handles the monitoring, backups, updates, and upgrades, and guarantees 99.9% uptime. Each store reaches Excede over its internet connection.
It isn’t new. Procede announced the Azure-based service back in April 2020. Excede itself is built on Microsoft SQL Server, and you can still run it on a SQL server of your own if you’d rather, which plenty of stores do. What hosting changes is who gets the phone call at 2 a.m. when the database server has a bad night. Under Hosted Services, that call goes to Procede. Fair trade.
Everybody says cloud now. What does that actually mean for a parts counter in a steel building two hours from the nearest city? It means the server moved, and nothing else in the building did.
Why Excede Dealers Are Hearing More About Azure in 2026
Four things happened inside of a year, and they all point the same way.
| When | What Procede announced | What it asks of store IT |
|---|---|---|
| December 2025 | Excede v10.5.3 ships with Procede Intelligence, which Procede says is powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI | A steady connection, and a clear answer on where dealership data goes |
| January 29, 2026 | Rubicon Technology Partners makes a majority investment in Procede to fund product work and integrations | More releases and more integrations to keep working at every store |
| February 2026 | At the ATD Show, Procede previews Customer 360 View, Duplicate Customer Cleanup, and Smart Filter Assist | More people using more of Excede, on more screens |
| September 21 to 23, 2026 | The 25th-anniversary Procede Software Conference in San Diego sells out, with Parts Pick, Communication Plus, Document Sign, and a Customer Portal on the launch list | Scanners, signature pads, and customer-facing logins that have to work on day one |
To be clear, I’m not the guy telling you a private equity investment is a warning sign. Procede said the money is for product and integrations, and when registration for the conference opened in May, half the seats were gone within two days, according to Procede. Customers who show up like that are customers who use the product. My read is simpler. A lot more Excede is coming, the AI pieces already run through Microsoft’s cloud, and every bit of it rides on your network and your logins.
The volume matters too. Franchised truck dealers wrote more than 11 million repair orders in 2025 and sold 416,467 medium- and heavy-duty trucks, according to ATD Data 2025. None of those repair orders waited politely for an internet circuit to come back.
Who Owns What Once Excede Is Hosted
Microsoft publishes a shared responsibility model for Azure, and it’s blunt about this. Whatever the deployment looks like, the customer always keeps four things, which are the data, the endpoints, the accounts, and access management. Procede sits between you and Microsoft, so part of that split is written into your Procede agreement. Read yours. This is how the work usually divides at a truck store.
| Layer | Procede and Microsoft | Your dealership |
|---|---|---|
| Datacenter and physical servers | Microsoft runs them | Nothing |
| Excede database and web applications | Procede hosts, monitors, backs up, and upgrades them | Deciding who gets in and what each person can see |
| The path from each store to Azure | Not theirs | Internet circuits, failover, and the firewall at every rooftop |
| Counter and shop devices | Procede sets the system requirements | PCs, scanners, printers, signature pads, phones, and tablets |
| Logins | Excede’s user and licensing tools | Who has an account, multi-factor authentication, and shutting off people who left |
| Microsoft 365 and Power BI | Procede builds Excede Analytics on Power BI | Licenses, sign-ins, and the security of your own Microsoft tenant |
| FTC Safeguards Rule program | Procede is a service provider in your file | The whole written program |
Seven rows, and the right-hand column never comes up empty except for the datacenter. That isn’t a knock on Procede. Their job is the software, and I’d rather they stay in that lane and do it well than try to manage a firewall in a store they’ve never walked into. That’s their one thing.
The 99.9% Uptime Guarantee Stops at Procede’s Edge
Do the math on 99.9%. A year has 8,760 hours, so a tenth of one percent works out to a little under nine hours, and that allowance is for the hosted environment. Your internet provider didn’t sign Procede’s guarantee. Neither did the switch in your parts department.
When the server sat in the back room, a dead internet circuit was an annoyance. The counter could still look up a part and close a repair order while somebody sat on hold with the carrier. Hosted, a store with no internet is a store with no Excede. Think about that.
I’ve watched stores spend real money on a DMS and then run it over the cheapest circuit the carrier sells, with no second line behind it. That’s a rough call. A second circuit from a different carrier, or cellular failover that switches over by itself, is a small line item next to one hour of a parts counter writing tickets by hand while trucks sit in the bays.
What Truck Dealers Need From IT Before and After the Move
Six things. I’d put them on one page per store and bring that page to the first planning call with Procede.
A Second Way Out of Every Store
Every rooftop that can’t run without Excede gets two paths to the internet, and the second one has to take over without anybody touching it. Then test it. Pull the primary line on a slow Tuesday afternoon and watch what the counter PCs do. If nobody has ever pulled that cable, you don’t have failover. You have a hope.
Counter PCs, Scanners, and Printers That Meet Procede’s Spec
Procede sets system requirements for Excede and gives them to customers. Ask for the current copy, then walk each counter with it. Write down what fails. What usually turns up is a handful of older PCs, a label printer on a driver nobody has updated in years, and a few machines still on Windows 10, which is its own deadline now that Windows 10 Extended Security Updates cost money every year. Count the scanners and signature pads while you’re there, because Parts Pick and Document Sign both end at a piece of hardware on a counter.
Wi-Fi That Reaches the Last Bay
Procede’s mobile service tools put repair orders on phones and tablets in the shop. Steel buildings eat Wi-Fi. Map the coverage bay by bay with the doors open and with them closed, and decide now how you’d lock or wipe a tablet that walks off. Tablets do walk off.
Logins and Microsoft 365
Here’s where I’d spend the most time. Once Excede is in the cloud, a username and password is the front door, and it’s a door anyone on the internet can walk up to. That’s a real problem. Microsoft’s 2026 Digital Defense Report says people and identities are primary entry points for attackers, and it lists phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication and passkeys among the best safeguards. The FTC Safeguards Rule already requires multi-factor authentication for anyone accessing an information system that holds customer information, under 16 CFR 314.4(c)(5).
Then there’s the Microsoft side. Procede built Excede Analytics on Microsoft Power BI, so the Microsoft accounts your managers use for email can also open a view into the financials. A shared parts counter login, or the account of a service writer who quit in March, is how somebody gets in. Who owns that? In most truck stores, nobody does. If you’ve never had anyone look inside your tenant, a Microsoft 365 breach assessment is the fastest way to find out who’s already in there, and our piece on why Microsoft 365 security is a dealership survival issue explains what’s at stake.
The Old Server in the Closet
After the move, your old SQL server still holds a full copy of every customer record you had on cutover day. It tends to sit there, powered on and unpatched, because nobody was told to turn it off. Pick a date. Either wipe it properly or keep it locked down and read-only for a set period, and write that decision into your Safeguards file.
Procede in Your Vendor File
Section 314.4(f) of the Safeguards Rule tells you to oversee service providers, which means choosing ones that can protect customer information, putting that in the contract, and checking on them periodically. Procede belongs in that file with its agreement, its security documentation, and its breach notification terms. So does your IT provider. Our FTC Safeguards compliance program keeps that file current, and the Motility breach showed what happens to truck dealers when a DMS vendor gets hit.
Questions to Ask Procede Before You Sign for Hosting
None of these are hostile. A good vendor has heard all of them.
- What exactly does the 99.9% uptime guarantee measure, and what’s excluded from it?
- If the hosted environment had to be restored, how old could our data be, and how long would we be down?
- How do our people sign in, and which multi-factor options do you support?
- Can we get a copy of our own data on a schedule? And what happens to it if we ever leave?
- What do you require at each store for PCs, browsers, printers, and bandwidth?
- When someone uses a Procede Intelligence feature, where does our data go?
On that last one, Procede’s CTO has said customers “can rely on the fact that their data is handled with care,” which is how he put it when the company previewed its newest AI features in February. Good. Get the specifics in writing anyway. Your Safeguards file runs on specifics.
Who Should Own the Store Side
We have a saying at Helion that once we get the plane in the air, we make it look easy. Hosting does the same thing to a server. It gets so quiet that people start to think the IT is finished, and then a scanner dies at 6:30 in the morning and the parts line is out the door. Nobody planned for it.
Helion has worked only with dealerships since 1997. We support 2,000-plus automotive and heavy truck dealerships and 35,000 end users, with an 82-second average time to reach a support agent and a 98% client retention rate. All of our clients are on the same roadmap for firewalls, wireless, and PCs, so an Excede store gets a setup we’ve already deployed tens of thousands of times. Truck stores don’t keep bankers’ hours, and we don’t charge extra for after hours. We don’t charge extra for weekends.
That’s what managed IT support for dealerships looks like under a hosted DMS. If you’re still choosing a system, our Karmak vs Procede comparison covers what each one asks of your network, and I made the wider case for Azure in an earlier post on why dealerships should choose Azure over on-premise servers.
What Excede Dealers Ask Us About Azure
Once Excede is hosted, can we stop paying for IT?
How much internet does a store really need for Excede in the cloud?
Is our customer data actually safer in Azure than in the back room?
We run Excede on our own server and it works fine. Do we have to move?
Private equity bought into Procede. Should that change our plans?
Excede is down at one store. Who do we call first?
The Server Moves to Azure and the Store Stays Put
Procede found its one thing a long time ago, and from where I sit it’s doing more of it every quarter. Moving Excede to Azure hands them the server, and I think that’s the right place for it. Everything your people touch stays in the building with you. That part doesn’t move.
If you’d like somebody to walk your stores before the move, start with our complimentary IT and cybersecurity assessment, and we’ll show you what’s ready for hosted Excede and what isn’t, store by store and counter by counter, before anybody puts a cutover date on the calendar. Somebody has to own the store side. Decide who first.