With Microsoft Dynamics GP 2015, ignore the old thinking on new releases

There’s been a lot of interest lately in Microsoft Dynamics GP 2015, but I’ve heard from a number of people that their company won’t move to the latest release. They insist on waiting until the first service pack or implementing one version back.

The world of software is changing in ways that make that thinking outdated and, in a cloud focused world, impossible to adhere to. But lets talk about GP 2015 specifically.

As I look at and work with GP 2015, I don't think of it as a major release. To me, GP 2013 R2 was the major release and 2015 is really the first update. The naming sequence was marketing-driven and here is why:

The big rocks delivered with GP 2013 R2 included requisitions, workflow and identity management for the web client. GP 2015's big rocks build on what was delivered in R2 with version 2 of workflow providing more workflows and options. GP 2015 also extends R2's identity management by connecting the web client to organizational accounts, which provides single sign-on capabilities for Microsoft Azure AD accounts.

So two of GP 2015's three big rocks are really extensions of GP 2013 R2 features. The third big rock, GP 2015's service based architecture is an optional install and is really designed to allow better connections to and from GP. It's a feature with a lot of promise, but not something users will benefit from for sometime.

GP 2015 also rounds out the last missing features of GP 2013's web client, adding Canadian Payroll and the little used Invoicing module while finally killing Business Portal ...