After reIMAGINE 2016: What We Know Now About Microsoft Dynamics GP and its partners

Microsoft worked to assure Dynamics GP partners this week that their ERP solution is not going away. In fact, it is going forward. But GP's future success is not a certainty; it still rests in the hands of partners who must sell, deploy, and support it, and do the work required to keep their clients on active maintenance.

Upgrading customers to GP 2016 was a key theme of the event. The new web client and other modernizing enhancements like web services with OData and Power BI integration improve the product's image and new Azure-based hosting options add flexibility and improve synergy with other modern Microsoft offerings. And various lower level improvements for financial management, inventory, and other areas in both 2016 and 2016 R2 also played well to the experts in the audience.

Another important, but somewhat expected announcement: Microsoft will slow down the GP release cadence from semi-annual to annual after the upcoming GP 2016 R2 release in December. Starting in 2017, the team will plan a single release per year. This change was a direct response to partners' feedback that neither they nor their customers could move quickly enough to take advantage of the more frequent updates.

Let's look at some of the other themes underpinning the event and shaping the conversation among GP partners.

De-escalating Dynamics 365

Microsoft made a concerted effort to assure GP partners that Dynamics 365 Business Financials does not replace GP, and VARs don't even need to add it to their businesses if they don't feel it is a good fit. It is, as Microsoft described it, one more option for partners to consider selling.

There was very little evangelizing at reIMAGINE 2016, either on Dynamics 365 or other key ...