If you’ve trusted Dynamics GP to run your business, the news that Microsoft will end mainstream support on September 30, 2029, and extended support by April 30, 2031, likely leaves you with questions. As Dynamics GP users, you have time before deciding what’s next for your business and whether you will upgrade your Dynamics GP environment, host your GP in the Enavate Cloud or migrate to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. After September 30, 2029, you won’t receive product enhancements, regulatory updates or hotfix support. Security updates will stop after April 30, 2031. While your Dynamics GP won’t change in the short term, you should take advantage of this time to understand your options. Click on one of the chapters below to jump to your section of interest, or keep scrolling to read through all of your options as a Dynamics GP user.
Click here to download the Guide as a PDF
Option 1: Upgrade Your GP Environment
Option 2: Host GP in the Cloud
Lower Total Cost of Ownership
Enhanced Security
Improved Operational Agility
How to Make a Move to the Cloud?
What to Expect in the Enavate Cloud?
Option 3: Migrate GP to Dynamics 365 Business Central (BC)
5 Key Benefits of Dynamics 365 Business Central
How Business Central Impacts Business Value
How to Prepare to Migrate from GP to BC
Xcelerate Your Move to Business Central
Business Central Licensing
Run a Checkup of Your Dynamics GP Environment
Whether you’re looking to get additional value out of your existing Dynamics GP environment, preparing for an upgrade or considering a migration to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, there’s a lot to gain from performing a Health Check on your current GP system. An Enavate Dynamics GP Health Check will give you a clear picture of where you are today and a roadmap to how your technology can help your organization get where you want to go next. The first step in this process is to use our free Enavate GP Health Check assessment tool designed to help you analyze your GP environment and scope the requirements to successfully take your next step. In less than 5 minutes, you can run this quick, secure tool without logging out of Dynamics GP.
The Assessment Tool will:
- Improve Visibility into ISV Products, Modules & Features
- Detect Possible Issues for Proactive Resolution
- Help you Understand System Complexity and its Potential Impact
- Deliver Migration Options Based on Modules Used
Using the data from the assessment, we can work together to determine what the best next steps are to help you achieve your goals. No matter what the best next step is, Enavate has the best team available to support you on your existing system, migrate you to the Cloud or Dynamics 365 Business Central, and manage your systems in the Cloud long-term.
Option 1: Upgrade Your Dynamics GP Environment
One possible next step for GP users is to purchase a perpetual Dynamics GP license before April 2025 or a subscription license before April 2026. When you upgrade your Dynamics GP system to the newest version, you’ll have access to a variety of features, including:
- Enhanced user experience
- Year-end updates
- New features
- Greater ISV connectivity
- Bug fixes
- Security enhancements
- Compliance updates (for payroll, taxes and other legal workflows)
- Improved integration with other Microsoft programs
- Active support
Bug fixes and compliance updates are critical for businesses today. At the heart of system maintenance, Microsoft rollouts include service pack, hotfix and compliance updates. These provide fixes to reported problems and help ensure you’re compliant with tax laws and accounting practices. Having access to new features helps you stay secure, competitive and efficient. The latest version of GP includes increased security measures, as well as functionality updates. New features may solve for costly workarounds your team must perform to complete their tasks, which are time-consuming and may compromise business data accuracy and security.
Upgrading also enables a more seamless connection to Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). Oftentimes, leveraging a third-party product as well as your GP solution requires using the newest versions of both. Your efficiency and competitiveness demand the latest feature enhancements that Microsoft Dynamics has to offer. Unfortunately, not all versions of GP can be upgraded automatically to the current version. Instead, you may need to take several steps or “hops” to reach the current system.
A good rule of thumb for Microsoft Dynamics GP upgrades is that, in most cases, if you’re on a specific release for one version of the GP application, you must upgrade to at least the equal release of the new version. For example, if you’re currently on the 2021 year-end release of Microsoft Dynamics GP 2016, you must upgrade to at least the equal 2021 year-end release of Microsoft Dynamics GP 2018/18. Each “hop” to a new version requires time and resources.
If you don’t upgrade regularly, you may experience extended downtimes and higher upgrade costs to get to the current version. If you want to update your Dynamics GP environment but don’t know where to start, you can reach out to our Enavate experts to help you determine how many hops are needed to get your systems up to date, implement changes and update your ISV integrations.
Option 2: Host Your GP in the Enavate Cloud – Powered by Microsoft Azure
A second possible option for GP users to leverage their existing GP environment more fully is to move to the Enavate Cloud – Powered by Microsoft Azure. Moving to the Cloud provides a lower total cost of ownership, enhanced security, and more.
Lower Total Cost of Ownership
When your business systems are deployed on-premises, you need hardware that supports your periods of peak demand. Some organizations are steady, but many fluctuate, whether that be month-to-month or seasonally. Whether your demand remains consistent or peaks intermittently, you have to buy hardware and software to support those peak demands.
With Cloud services, you can expand and contract your systems as your business requires it – saving you significant amounts of money long-term.
- On-premises server is somewhere around $1500 per month
- Average Enavate Cloud server cost is around $700 per month
Slash Maintenance and Security Costs
Maintaining hardware is extremely expensive. It is time-consuming, and quite honestly, it is rarely done well. You have a business to run, and IT becomes secondary.
The vast majority of security breaches come as a result of non-patched or non-updated systems. Your infrastructure needs constant care which is very time-consuming and interferes with your core business.
According to industry experts, like Gartner, the average cost of maintaining an on-premises server is somewhere around $1500 per month but can be up to $2000 per month. That cost includes not only the space to house those servers, power for them, and HVAC to cool the room, but also maintenance and support, patching and updating, as well as a separate disaster recovery site to ensure business continuity. In contrast, the average Enavate Cloud server cost is around $700 per month, cutting server
maintenance costs in half.
Save with Successful Backups and Restores
Another huge nightmare is when a data backup fails or when data can’t be restored. This can happen for a number of reasons, such as media failure, natural disasters, cyberattacks, human error (e.g., forgetting to run backups or test restores), and patch related misconfigurations that can cause malfunctions. And even if everything goes right with a data restore, recovery can take much longer when you’re working with a traditional on-premises solution than would be in the Cloud.
With Enavate’s Cloud solution, you can use Cloud-native backup services that provide the most reliable way to continuously back up your data. These backups are always tested and confirmed so that they work when you need them whenever disaster strikes, and we can help you with customized backup strategies to fit your specific data needs. With your critical data in the Cloud, disaster recovery is end-to-end and secure and creates redundancy if a primary datacenter fails.
Prevent Costly Downtime
If your systems aren’t up and running, you can’t service your customers, and you end up losing revenue. If you experience downtime too often, or at a particularly high-volume time, you can earn a bad reputation that may be hard to shake. When your employees have to spend time rebuilding systems or explaining to their customers that they can’t properly service them, they get stressed, discouraged, and burnt out, leading to expensive staff churn.
According to a recent study by Atlassian, the average cost of downtime for small to midsized businesses can be as much as $427 per minute. For large businesses, it reaches as high as $9,000 per minute. Suffice it to say, you want to avoid downtime as much as possible. Enavate’s fully managed Cloud solution can help.
The Enavate Cloud offers a 99.95% guaranteed uptime, which is less than 24 minutes per month. Additionally, we leverage enterprise-class monitoring tools 24/7/365. These tools are often too expensive to purchase, run and manage for SMBs. In the Enavate Cloud, we can spread the cost of those tools across hundreds or thousands of cloud environments, making the cost for us to provide it much more appealing to you.
And then, finally, Microsoft has made it very advantageous for you to move into the Enavate Cloud powered by Microsoft Azure, by providing three years of extended support for Windows Server 2012, 2012 R2, and SQL Server 2012, which extends the life of your Microsoft Dynamics ERP solution at no additional cost.
Enhanced Security
In the past, large organizations were often the target of hackers because they had more data or money to lose. However, larger organizations also come with multi-million dollar IT budgets that include the very best in security.
As a result, today 77% of security breaches occur at small and medium businesses, which is very frightening. The reason that it’s easier to get into a SMB is that you don’t have the same budget to spend to protect and secure your data. Additionally, the perpetrators don’t want to call too much attention to themselves by hitting a big jackpot. According to one ransomware gang member, “It is better to quietly receive stable small sums from midsized companies.” The reason that Enavate chose Microsoft Azure as our cloud platform was in order to directly address this issue.
We are not alone in this choice. Over 400,000 companies and 95 of the Fortune 100 are using the Azure Cloud. Why? People think of Microsoft as a technology company, but they are more of security company. Microsoft spends 1 billion dollars per year on security for Azure. Microsoft has over 3500 Azure security engineers in place. They leverage a number of tools running in Azure to review and analyze over 8 trillion events every day to identify threats and protect your data.
Additionally, regulatory compliance challenges are significant. Today, Microsoft meets the requirements for over 200 regulatory compliance challenges, which is far more than any other cloud provider. All of these factors combine to make the Azure Cloud an incredibly safe and secure place to store your data.
Improved Operational Agility
Operating with agility starts with the process of migrating to the cloud. When you move your Microsoft Dynamics GP, or any other ERP application, to the cloud, there are no changes to your current software. Whatever version of Dynamics GP you are on, we pick it up and move it into the Enavate Cloud without any adaptations. The next morning, when everyone comes into work, they access it the same way they always have and see the same screens, so no one misses a beat.
Any independent software vendors, external connections and customizations also all stay in place. It is also important to note that you retain full ownership of your business information – both the data and the application.
Gain scalability that will allow you to grow your business without worrying about your IT infrastructure. Rather than purchasing your computing resources to accommodate peak times in your business, the Enavate Cloud environment allows you to adjust your resources as needed.
Additionally, Enavate monitors and manages all components 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Our teams stay on top of any issues that arise and typically resolve the problem before users even notice something’s wrong. We also fully test the configurations and interoperability of your environment before we put it into production.
Practical, Predictable Costs
Azure is billed according to three services:
- Compute: The virtual machines, memory and CPU that provide the infrastructure needed to run applications. These can run on Windows, Linux or SQL O/S. Compute capacity is billed by the second.
- Storage: Secure Cloud storage that protects your data infrastructure storage solutions (which could vary) or can be attached to other resources such as virtual machines. Storage is billed by gigabyte per month.
- Networking: Networking, or data transfer, allows connectivity between Cloud and on-premises infrastructure and services. You aren’t charged for inbound data transfer, but you pay a fee for outbound data transfer.
How to Make a Move to the Cloud?
At Enavate, we’ve migrated thousands of organizations’ ERP applications and data into the cloud and
we’ve developed a proven, seamless process comprised of three steps:
Assess and Plan
The Enavate team uses a combination of software tools and consultancy best practices to discover what applications can be migrated, their current configurations, the people that will be impacted and the dependencies of the application(s). The result is a comprehensive plan for what to do with the application and the expectations on availability and functionality.
Test and Migrate
First, we set up Azure subscriptions using best practices for security, connectivity, policies and general governance prior to migration to ensure that customers are using Azure correctly from the start. Then, we perform the migration using the prescribed method identified in the assessment plan: rehost, retire, replace, rearchitect or retain. Finally, we evaluate and test to ensure the migrated application meets the criteria outlined in the assessment.
Optimize and Manage
Once you’ve migrated to the Cloud, we regularly review your usage and adjust computing resources as necessary to help you minimize the total cost of ownership (TCO).
What to Expect in the Enavate Cloud
Simple, Secure Management
Enavate Cloud is a fully managed Microsoft Azure environment. Hosting GP in Azure with managed services delivers advantages for running the application, improving security and reducing dependency on local servers.
Our consultants are tried-and-true Microsoft Dynamics experts armed with innovative methodologies to help optimize your system performance.
Enavate Cloud delivers more than the latest hardware and software, you also get:
- Visibility through a client portal, so you can easily see current incidents, support statuses and other information about your environment
- Guaranteed 99.95% uptime
- Peace of mind that comes from meeting regulatory compliance challenges
- Support for Windows server operating system administration
- Auditable patching updates, with systems patched on a regular basis
- Automated management, security and windows updates
- 24x7 support for your SQL server environment, including backups, optimization and performance tuning
Enavate’s Azure Suite for GP
Ensure a smooth transition to Azure with our one-stop solution for Dynamics GP IT needs. Our Azure Suite combines Azure
hosting, infrastructure support, application support and migration services into a comprehensive package. You’ll get:
- Simplified IT management: A single point of contact for all your IT needs.
- Cost-effective services: Predictable prices with one monthly payment for all essential services.
- Unified services: Our extensive expertise ensures an efficient transition and ongoing Azure experience.
- Reliable support and maintenance: Tailored to your needs to ensure operational efficiency.
- Scalability: The solution grows with you to ensure long-term adaptability, flexibility and usability.
- Security and compliance: Meet all regulatory standards with our robust security measures and compliance support.
Option 3: Migrate to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
A third option for GP users is to migrate to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Many businesses are making this move right now, and it’s helpful to understand what this would entail, as well as the key differences and benefits.
Dynamics GP vs. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
Although Dynamics 365 Business Central and GP share similar characteristics, there are key differences that make Business Central well worth the transition:
| Dynamics GP |
Dynamics 365 Business Central |
| GP is natively an on-premises solution that requires companies to maintain and protect their own on-site servers |
BC was built in the Cloud and is protected by Microsoft, which means you can save money on hosting, maintenance and security. |
| Updates to GP come with additional fees for update services provided by software partners, which require interruptions to business activities and productivity. |
Microsoft’s expert team performs regular bug fixes and updates to BC remotely without requiring downtime or additional fees, because security and data backups are included in the subscription fees. |
| GP has limited workflow automation functionality and cross-platform synchronicity, which results in manual updates and data entry that can lead to errors. |
BC automatically syncs information via the Cloud, streamlining processes and allowing teams to access important data and apps from anywhere. |
In addition, many of the third-party tools integrated into your GP system are native in Dynamics 365 Business Central. Microsoft offers substantial discounts for moving to BC based on your specific implementation.
5 Key Benefits of Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central
Upgrading to Business Central doesn’t mean saying goodbye to the workflows, add-ons, and functionalities you’re used to. Rather, BC takes what’s great about GP and makes them better. Plus, once your teams get a handle on BC, they’ll be able to use automation, connected tools and more streamlined accounting options to get the most out of the platform.
Some key benefits of Business Central include:
Automatic Updates
Microsoft releases minor updates monthly and major updates twice per year. All updates are included in the monthly subscription. Because changes are automated, you can schedule your updates during off-hours to reduce disruption.
Streamlined Workflows and Automation
Business Central connects Microsoft tools and third party add-ons to synchronize data automatically and streamline workflows. For instance, teams can automate invoice approval, edit Excel spreadsheets in Business Central or process transactions and quotes directly from Outlook. And there are greater efficiencies for accounting teams for core processes.
Better Reporting and Analytics
Because platforms and channels are always connected, your team will have greater insight into company-wide financial, sales, marketing and customer analytics.
Connectivity
Business Central works effortlessly with other Dynamics 365 apps, Office 365, PowerApps, Power Automate and Power BI. It can also integrate with various third-party add-ons, so you can continue to use the custom software solutions you used in GP.
Integrated Training
Your team members can learn how to use each new BC tool with built-in training videos and walkthroughs. And if they’re ever not sure what a button does, they can simply hover over a function to trigger an explanatory popup.
How Business Central Impacts Business Value
Sticking with GP may help you avoid rocking the boat. But it won’t help that boat move any faster. BC, meanwhile, can be rocket fuel for businesses.
Business Central consolidates your core business capabilities. By upgrading to Dynamics 365 Business Central, you’re not only migrating finance and accounting functions to the Cloud, but you’re also centralizing other ERP functions (such as operations, service and sales). That means vastly more efficient workflows, greater efficiency and increased productivity, which all translates to a healthier bottom line.
Business Central gives your company a single source of truth. You’ll no longer have to wonder which file to work from, because all of your data will be centralized and automatically updated. As a result, you’ll be able to generate reports more efficiently and make more accurate business forecasts and decisions.
Business Central is easy to scale so you can welcome growth as it happens. If an increase in business requires more storage, users or functionality, you can easily add it to your Cloud-based BC solution without needing to invest in and install new hardware. And you can also scale back as necessary without worrying about sunk costs. In other words, BC makes your company with much more agility.
Business Central makes remote collaboration much easier. Whether your team members are working from home, on the go or at one of your company’s multiple locations, BC’s Cloud-based tools make it possible for everyone to work together just as easily as if they were all in the same office. Businesses need to be agile and resilient, and BC can help.
How to Prepare to Migrate from GP to Business Centralp
The finer details of your migration to BC will depend on your organization’s specific tech infrastructure and goals. Broadly speaking, however, the process involves these steps:
Audit Your Current System
Take stock of what systems you use, your processes, the data each system uses, and the overlap of departments that use the same data. Mapping all this out will identify how your systems and business processes are intertwined.
Analyze the Audit
It’s not enough to just gather data. You must also figure out what the data is telling you. Where are the redundancies? What can be more efficient and what problems can be fixed with technology? And which problems need improvements to streamline processes?
Talk to Your Teams
Talk to each team that will be affected by migrating to Dynamics 365 Business Central. Find out what their pain points are, their concerns about migrating to a new system and what’s on their wish list to make their jobs more efficient with fewer headaches.
Find an ERP Partner You Can Trust
It takes some searching to find an experienced partner that’s the right fit for your business. Make sure you’re asking the right questions of potential partners who really know your industry. You want someone who’s going to answer the hard questions and tell you, realistically, what you’re up against and how they can help you overcome unavoidable obstacles in the migration process.
Partner with Enavate to Migrate to Business Central
The first step to beginning a Business Central migration is to request an assessment from our technology experts. Our Enavate Dynamics GP Assessment Tool reviews your current infrastructure, technology requirements and business conditions in minutes. The goal is to lay out requirements, processes and goals that can be incorporated into a Business Central migration roadmap to best fit your business needs.
Enavate’s team uses the information to determine a step-by-step plan to move your company to Business Central. Enavate offers complete migration services, including technical and change management support, so you can move to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central with minimal disruption to your operations.
Enavate teamed up with Microsoft to develop the Microsoft GP Data Migration Tool, a built-in migration tool to simplify the process of moving your data from GP to the Cloud. This tool only works with GP 2015 and later versions. It also requires your on-premises system to be running SQL Server 2016 or a later version and your database needs a compatibility level of 130 or more. If you’re on older versions of GP or SQL Server, you’ll either have an additional step of upgrading before migrating to the Cloud, or you can choose to complete a full migration from square one.
Once your system requirements are met, you’ll be able to migrate data to the Cloud, so you can fully operate on Business Central. This includes data related to inventory, customers, vendors, finance and more. Once you’ve migrated the following data into the Cloud, you’ll be ready for Dynamics 365 Business Central to become your primary ERP:
- Chart of Accounts master records
- Customer records and outstanding transactions from the Receivables module
- Vendor master records and outstanding transactions from the Payables module
- Inventory items
- Checkbook master data
- Historical data from Inventory, Payables, Receivables, PO processing and Sales Order processing
You’ll likely encounter additional information that must be migrated manually. Your partner can help you plan for migrating this data.
Quickly and Affordably Migrating to Business Central
If you’re ready to make the move to Business Central and want to start leveraging its efficiency, anywhere access and scalability sooner rather than later, Enavate Xcelerate is the fastest way to get you there with confidence. This service leverages our proven rapid deployment methodology to eliminate the high-cost, lengthy deployment times and disruptions that plague traditional migrations.
Budgeting is easy with our transparent and predictable fixed-price approach, and defined timeframes ensure you know what to expect. Xcelerate: GP to BC Finance Essentials starts with the Core Finance functionality and gives you the option to add additional functionality as needed. Here’s what to expect:
| Package Details |
Enavate Xcelerate:
GP to BC Finance Essentials |
Enavate Xcelerate:
GP to BC Finance Enhanced |
| Designed for |
Current users of Dynamics GP with the basic accounting requirements |
Current users of Dynamics GP with more complex requirements |
| Go-live time |
10 weeks |
12 weeks |
| Business Central Functionality |
Finance
Accounts Payable
Accounts Receivable
Cash & Banking
Basic Reporting |
Advanced Finance
Accounts Payable
Accounts Receivable
Advanced Cash & Banking
Basic Reporting
Fixed Assets
Multi-company Setup and
Consolidations |
Both Xcelerate GP to BC migration packages include:
- Migration assessment and recommendations
- Business Central provisioning in Microsoft SaaS
- Training and user acceptance testing support
- Project management
- Business Central Finance module, basic accounting configuration
- GP data migration using Microsoft’s GP Data Migration Tool (for GP versions 2015 and up with SQL 2016 and up)
- First month-end close assistance
Enavate understands you have requirements that go beyond the basics, such as functionality that relies on third-party providers and in-depth reporting. Once we complete the basics, our Integrations and Reporting Workshops give us the opportunity to assess and make recommendations to address your additional needs, for example advising you on ISVs that are BC optimized.
Learn more about how Enavate Xcelerate might be your best path to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
What Do You Need to Know About Licensing for Business Central?
Business Central is a hosted, subscription-based solution, and the monthly user fee includes both the software and management of the hosting environment. The two licensing options for BC are Essentials and Premium. Each provides access to a wide range of features and capabilities in BC. Once you determine the functionality that’ll accommodate your business needs, your user licenses will be under that option.
Where GP user licenses are concurrent, limiting the number of users who can be logged into the system at any one time, BC licenses are named users and each person who logs into the system must have their own user license. You’ll need to review your list of GP users to determine how many people will need a BC license.
Essentials License: Essentials licenses are the first level of BC user licenses. They are $70 per user per month and include the following capabilities:
- Financial Management
- Supply Chain Management
- Human Resources Management
- Warehouse Management and Inventory
- Project Management
- Customer Relationship Management
Premium License: Premium licenses build upon the Essentials license and are $100 per user per month. The capabilities include all the same features as the Essentials license, plus the following:
- Service Order Management
- Manufacturing
Team Member License: Users who require read-only access, or who approve or reject workflows assigned to them in BC can utilize a Team Member License. For users who don’t need a full Essentials or Premium user license, the Team Member license is a good alternative. Team Member licenses are $8 per user per month.
Enavate—Your Partner for Wherever Your Dynamics GP Path Takes You
As a trusted Microsoft partner with extensive experience with both ERP software and the Cloud, Enavate knows and understands your applications and infrastructure and can help you make the best decisions for the future of your business software.
Any change to your current system, whether staying on Dynamics GP on- premises, moving to the Cloud or migrating to BC, requires thoughtful and careful planning and a clear vision of how your business operates today and where you need to be tomorrow. Getting guidance from one of our Senior GP consultants is often exactly what you need to get on the right path.
Our team can review your goals and assist you in determining the most appropriate timeline for your technology and business to help determine if, and when, a move to the cloud is right for you. Regardless of which path you choose, Enavate will be there for you every step of the way.
We know you have questions about where to go from here with Dynamics GP. We can help you find the right answers for you. Get Started with a Dynamics GP Health Check.
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