Microsoft just announced Dynamics GP’s End-of-Life—What now?
Note: The Bridge to the Cloud 2 promotion mentioned in this blog has been extended through the end of 2025.
Microsoft has officially announced the end-of-life for Microsoft GP, signaling the sunset of this stalwart in the financial management software landscape.
At Syvantis Technologies, we understand how this impacts the many loyal and dedicated GP users who have counted on us for their support over the years. Your trust in and collaboration with us have been essential to building a strong GP community. We are dedicated to supporting you every step of the way through this critical transition.
We also understand that a change such as this can be very challenging. Transitioning from a familiar system to a new one requires careful planning and an abundance of assistance and support. At the same time, it presents a significant opportunity for businesses to modernize their financial operations and leverage the power of cloud-based technology.
The GP End-of-Life Timeline
Microsoft announced a few dates to wind down GP:
April 1, 2025: New customers cannot purchase GP perpetual licenses
April 1, 2026: New customers cannot purchase GP subscription licenses
Sept 30, 2029: This is the end of mainstream support. There will be no more product enhancements, regulatory updates (i.e. tax compliance changes), service packs, or technical support.
April 30, 2031: There will be no more security updates or patches after this date.
You can read more about the end of license purchases and the end of mainstream support and security updates.
Although Microsoft’s announcement might have felt abrupt and sparked some worry, these dates are far off. There’s plenty of time for a gradual shift away from GP, and you can rest easy knowing that you don’t have to spring into action right this second. That said, we do encourage you to start making plans soon and embed an ERP move into your 5-year plans and upcoming budgets.
Microsoft already has promotions to help you out, too. Through the end of 2024 businesses can take advantage of the Bridge to the Cloud promotion, which offer a 40% discount on licensing costs with a 3-year moving period from GP to BC.
Why Choose Microsoft Business Central
Even before this announcement, transitioning to Microsoft Business Central has become a strategic imperative for many businesses. Let's look at why this transition is essential and explore the compelling benefits that Microsoft Business Central has to offer.
Microsoft’s priority
Many businesses find that to maintain an aging application is costly and challenging, and even with significant investment, they cannot easily scale or adopt new capabilities, such as AI. Microsoft has been prioritizing Business Central development for years now, and it’s their flagship ERP product—particularly for the small to midsize business (SMB) landscape. This means constant improvements and new features and faster development for those new features.
The cutting edge of tech advancements
Business Central is built on the cloud, which provides a lot of benefits. It’s scalable and automatically updates to the newest version, meaning improved security and compliance as your business grows, without extra effort on your part. You can work from anywhere at any time with the browser-based interface, and although it does look different from Dynamics GP, the user experience is very intuitive and easy to pick up on. We’ve also seen a lot of exciting Copilot AI additions recently that are aimed at optimizing business performance, automating routine tasks, and increasing employee productivity.
Robust capabilities & customizability
Business Central offers a comprehensive suite of financial management capabilities out of the box, and you can tailor Business Central to your specific workflows and requirements. Compared to Dynamics GP, which is hard to customize, Business Central is wonderfully flexible and adjustable to exactly your needs. As your partner, Syvantis will help you make Business Central work exactly as it needs to for your business processes, not the other way around.
Beyond financial management, there are optional advanced features—like supply chain management, manufacturing, and project capabilities. Having all your financial, inventory, warehousing, and manufacturing data in one system is an incredible benefit.
Microsoft ecosystem connectivity
Business Central is also connected to other Microsoft applications—from Dynamics 365 Sales, Microsoft Teams, Excel, and Outlook—enabling employees to work seamlessly with timely data, in the tools they use daily. This built-in connection is a huge leap forward from Dynamics GP because it means your systems talk to each other more easily and you don’t need to spend time manually transferring and entering data from one place to another
Cost Savings
If you're only thinking about the cost of licensing, implementation, customization, and training, that just scratches the surface. On-premises costs include data storage, servers and facilities, supporting and maintaining the platform, keeping up with security and compliance changes, and maintaining robust disaster recovery. But all that is mitigated with cloud-based applications, meaning you can redeploy those infrastructure/IT costs to more strategic initiatives, like business improvement, innovation, and the adoption of AI.
How Syvantis can help you move
Syvantis can migrate your company from your current Dynamics GP application to Business Central, to allow you to take advantage of a more modern, full-featured ERP solution. In fact, moving businesses from GP to Business Central is one of our particular specialties, and we’ve helped many of our clients do just that.
Many of our ERP technical experts have experience using both GP and BC, and therefore are uniquely positioned to understand your experience transitioning away from GP, and they will be with you every step of the way as you move to BC.
Our transition process includes:
Assessment: A thorough and transparent system discovery to evaluate your current GP environment and develop a comprehensive migration plan.
System Planning and Building: We take the time to get to know your business needs and customize the system in ways that work perfectly for your processes.
Data Migration: Transferring your existing data to Business Central securely and efficiently.
Training, Testing, and Adoption: Ensuring your team is equipped with the skills and training materials to use Business Central effectively.
As the end-of-life for Microsoft GP approaches, businesses must seize the opportunity to transition to Microsoft Business Central. By embracing this modern solution, you can unlock significant efficiency, scalability, and overall business performance benefits. Don't let the sunset of Microsoft GP leave you behind. Start your journey toward a more streamlined and innovative future with Business Central today.