Microsoft Dynamics GP community veterans react to news of the ERP’s end dates

This week’s news that Microsoft will end support of Dynamics GP within the next six years was met with a mix of disappointment and acceptance from familiar voices in the community, but also some notes of determination.

The decision to end product support and updates on September 30, 2029 and end extended support on April 30 2031 follows a well-documented series of decisions over several years that have progressively weakened the product’s future prospects, even as it has continued to serve tens of thousands of customers. 

Most discussions in the GP community at this point will lead to long-term planning, including potential options for ERP replacement. In the Microsoft ecosystem, that ERP option for most GP users is Dynamics 365 Business Central, but some will likely want to consider D365 Finance and Supply Chain Management, too. And competing ERPs are likely bringing renewed campaigns to their GP-using prospects. 

The community of current and former GP bloggers have already offered varying reactions to the news that reflect a range of sentiments and perspectives on the future. Let’s review some of them here.

“Sad but expected”

Microsoft MVP Jen Kuntz: 

Today is a sad day for those of us in the Microsoft Dynamics GP ecosystem, though we all knew it would come eventually.

Microsoft MVP David Musgrave: 

Sadly, the day has finally arrived. We knew it was coming for many years. Since the premature (since retracted) announcement by Mike Morton at Community Summit 2022, it has been expected sooner rather than later.

Ian Grieve: 

In an announcement which cannot be a surprise to anyone, Microsoft have announced that Microsoft Dynamics GP is coming to the end of its life.

Beat Bucher: 

We all knew this was coming one day… but I wasn’t expecting it that soon.

Microsoft’s Terry Healy: 

It is with mixed emotions that we announce the end-of-life for Microsoft Dynamics GP, a product that has been a cornerstone of our community for over 20 years. This decision was not made lightly, and we understand the impact it may have on you.

Evaluating the impact of “end of support”

Jen Kuntz: 

Customers have a 5-year window to plan their next steps. That's a lot of time, but it will move quickly, no doubt about it.

David Musgrave: 

The bottom line is that if you want to stay on a supported ERP platform you will need to move off Microsoft Dynamics GP in the next five years. There is no need to rush immediately to change platform, but you need to plan for the future and do your research.

Several Microsoft partners with serious GP practices have also released statements on the news. Enavate, which has a team of over forty GP engineers, encouraged customers to start evaluating their options to “ensure a smooth transition to a cloud-based solution when the right time arrives.”

Another major player in the GP space, njevity, is making the case for why partners should consider selling njevity their GP practices to give their GP customers a committed partner that can onboard them smoothly. And the company’s message to GP customers: “We are Dynamics GP’s ride or die partner”. They wrote:

The fact is, businesses can and do continue to use their ERP systems well beyond their official “end of life” dates. Just look at how long Great Plains Accounting and Dynamics SL have stuck around—long after Microsoft officially stopped supporting them. 

Stay or go?

As njevity’s message shows, not everyone will follow the conventional wisdom of planning a move away from GP, both for customers and service providers. Some Dynamics SL and Dynamics NAV customers have kept their stable old ERPs in service, and plenty of GP customers are already running unsupported versions with no real plans to get onto the Modern Lifecycle to gain the remaining support until 2029 and 2031. 

Here’s what some of the experts have shared on this topic.

Jen Kuntz: 

Do I recommend you keep using Dynamics GP after 2029? No, if you are using the payroll modules since tax updates and compliance with regulatory changes are pivotal to running payroll. I would also say no for non-payroll sites, unless you're actively planning an ERP implementation to something else for everyone else. (But that is just my opinion)

Ian Grieve: 

Yes, you now need to seriously consider your options and start planning to replace Microsoft Dynamics GP, but there are partners committing to supporting users of Dynamics GP even after the end of life and ISVs committing to continue developing their add-ons. However, there is a big risk to using an ERP system which is out of support with the vendor as anything which goes wrong won’t get their support after the end of life date.

David Musgrave: 

The bottom line is that if you want to stay on a supported ERP platform you will need to move off Microsoft Dynamics GP in the next five years. There is no need to rush immediately to change platform, but you need to plan for the future and do your research.

Beat Bucher: 

Some customers that I work with are still on old GP versions like 2010, 2013 and 18.0. But it might become increasingly more difficult for those customers to get support, either from Microsoft or former partners. Many of them have already jumped the bandwagon to move over to either Dynamics 365 (Business Central or else), or other concurrent ERP products like Acumatica or NetSuite, to only name a few.

Clear options, difficult decisions

Any GP customer that has been paying attention to the community over the last five years should already have some familiarity with the product’s steady loss of investment and reduced relevance within Microsoft’s overall Business Applications space. But for anyone who has more recently inherited a GP system or perhaps is only now getting the news, the experts noted in this article, along with Microsoft’s official guidance will be a good starting point for how to proceed.

And the GP community will continue to be a hotbed of discussion about planning for the future. Events like the upcoming Community Summit will feature voices from both the community and Microsoft on what to expect in GP’s final act. Customers and partners will also continue to share their stories related to deciding to stay with GP or move on to newer platforms. 

Despite the passion that customers and professionals have for GP, the community’s activity is likely further decelerate in 2025 and beyond as a result of Microsoft’s decision. As more partners sell off their GP practices and the remaining independent experts continue to ramp up their skills on other products, the pool of resources will likely become more concentrated in a few companies and a handful of independent consultants. 

Microsoft and other vendors have had their GP replacement playbooks well in hand for the last few years, and this final phase of the product’s lifecycle will also show us how well those propositions play out.

One notable difference in messaging this week has been on the theme of how to describe a move away from GP. Individual voices like those quoted here have consistently been reinforcing the idea that a move to Business Central or any other ERP is a re-implementation, not a migration. Here are a few examples…

Jen Kuntz wrote: 

I will die on this hill. It is not a migration, it is an implementation of a completely different software even though it is owned by the same corporation.

David Musgrave: 

Remember that whatever product you end up going with, it will not be a Migration, but a full re-implementation to a new system with a different user interface and probably a different methodology to the way it is used. 

Ian Grieve: 

Microsoft, and partners, will be pushing Business Central to Dynamics GP users, likely talking about it as an “upgrade”, but it is a re-implementation and not an upgrade. I write this even as a Business Central consultant, albeit one with experience of Dynamics GP.

And amid the disruptive nature of this news, several of those same experts also shared a simple bit of advice as customers reckon with the future: don’t panic.