What is the future of Dynamics GP, and what are my options? Server Considerations

Rumors around Microsoft Dynamics GP’s end-of-life have incited fear in businesses around the world. The unfortunate fact is that most of the available information is either incorrect, incomplete, or hard to understand. The truth is, Dynamics GP is not going away anytime soon!  So, we are reaching out to all S2 clients not on the current version (18.6) to provide accurate information about the state of Dynamics GP and to help successfully guide your business to the right solution.  

Server Considerations

Often when a company is planning a Dynamics GP upgrade, attention turns to the age and reliability of the old server.  It’s imperative to be mindful of Microsoft support expiration dates that could impact your GP installation and put your data at risk.

Running any End-of-Life software once the support ends is a serious security risk. Without operating system and SQL security updates from Microsoft, there is an increased risk from cyberattacks like ransomware or loss of data.  In addition, the system’s performance will be affected. Incremental updates (also known as patches) give stability to your database, so when they end, a database’s performance will start to drop like a downwards spiral – sometimes very rapidly. This of course affects your operation and exposes your organization to increased risk of downtime.

Windows and SQL Server product releases follow Microsoft’s Fixed Lifecycle Policy. This means they are supported for a total of 10 years – 5 years of Mainstream Support followed by 5 years of Extended Support. Most Windows Server releases also have options to extend support for another 3 or 4 years after that if you purchase the Extended Security Update option.  Support ending dates by version are as follows:

This can be an ideal time to migrate to a new server.  S2 is ready to support your Microsoft Dynamics GP server migration. We can consult, plan, and execute your data migration from old server to a new server.