Confident Clouds · Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft stopped selling Dynamics GP. Your business still runs on it.
You have years of GP ahead of you, not months. The question isn't whether you migrate — it's who keeps GP running, patched and secure while you plan it properly.
The part nobody is selling you
Migration is the easy conversation. The runway is the hard one.
Every Dynamics partner in the country is emailing you about Business Central right now. They're not wrong — you will move. But a migration done properly takes twelve to twenty-four months of planning, and until the day you cut over, GP is still the system your month-end close depends on.
So the real question is what happens in between. GP still needs its SQL Server patched. Its Windows Server estate needs security updates. Your users still need MFA that works, remote access that doesn't break, integrations that keep posting, and backups somebody has actually tested restoring.
Microsoft has stepped back from GP. Most partners want the migration project, not the three years of infrastructure that comes before it — so they hand that layer to whoever will take it.
That handoff is where things go wrong. The ERP partner blames the infrastructure. The infrastructure vendor blames the ERP. Meanwhile a certificate quietly expires and nobody can log in on the first working day of the quarter.
The dates nobody sent you a notice about
The dates that move first are not GP's.
Everyone quotes 2029. That is the application. The Windows and SQL versions carrying the application run out well before it does, and those are the dates that decide when you actually have to act.
Dynamics GP
| Version | Support ends | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| GP 2015 | 8 April 2025 | Extended support over. No fixes, no security updates. |
| GP 2016 | 14 July 2026 | Extended support over. |
| GP 2018 | 11 January 2028 | The last of the year-named releases still in extended support. |
| GP (modern lifecycle) | 31 December 2029 | End of support. Security updates continue to 30 April 2031. |
The platform underneath it
| Product | Support ends | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Windows Server 2012 R2 | 13 October 2026 | The final Extended Security Update. Not the end of mainstream support — that was October 2023. This is the last patch that will ever ship. There is no year four and no paid extension after it. |
| Windows Server 2016 | 12 January 2027 | Fifteen months behind it. |
| Windows Server 2019 | 9 January 2029 | Still ahead of GP's own date, but not by much. |
| SQL Server 2014 and earlier | Already past | Out of support. If your GP databases are here, this is the first thing to fix. |
| SQL Server 2016 | 14 July 2026 | The same day GP 2016 went. A lot of GP estates lost both halves at once and nobody sent a notice. |
| SQL Server 2017 | 12 October 2027 | Before GP 2018 goes. |
| SQL Server 2019 | 8 January 2030 | Outlives GP's support date by a week. |
Azure does not extend any of this. Hosting a server in Azure made its Extended Security Updates free instead of chargeable — same patches, same schedule, no invoice. It never changed the product's lifecycle. The free Azure ESU for Windows Server 2012 R2 ends on the same day as the paid one: 13 October 2026.
Nothing is pushed to you when that day arrives. An Azure VM is infrastructure — Microsoft runs the hypervisor, you own the operating system inside it. There is no forced upgrade, no prompt, and the bill is identical whether the VM runs Server 2012 R2 or Server 2025. That is why so few people know the date exists.
Three ways through it — only one is a migration
Stay on GP. Rebuild what is underneath it.
GP is supported to 2029. If the platform under it is current you are not in any danger, and you should stop being sold a migration. New Windows and SQL builds, GP moved onto them, everything else untouched.
No data conversion. No retraining. Not a finance project at all — the close runs exactly as it does today.
Typical effort:4 weeks. One planned cutover weekend.
Move the estate. Keep the application.
GP runs perfectly well in Azure, in AWS, or hosted with a partner like us. Same GP, same close, same reports, same integrations posting overnight — on a supported operating system, patched, backed up, with someone on call who is not you.
This buys you to 2029 without touching the data, and turns a capital replacement cycle into an operating cost.
Typical effort:6 weeks. Users see a new address and nothing else.
Migrate to Business Central.
The right answer eventually, and much better done on your calendar than on a deadline. Chart of accounts, posting groups and dimensions all have to be derived from how you have actually been posting — which is work, and it is work that goes badly when it is rushed.
Doing route 1 or 2 first is not a detour. It is what buys you the room to do this one properly.
Typical effort:2-4 months, planned around your close calendar.
Dates above are Microsoft's published lifecycle dates, checked September 2026. Which of the three routes fits you depends on your GP version and what it is running on — that is the first thing we work out, and it takes about an hour.
What makes us different
We run both layers. Most partners run one.
A typical Dynamics partner
ERP only
Confident Clouds
ERP and everything under it
One vendor owns the ERP and the servers it runs on. When something breaks at 7am on a close day, there is exactly one number to call and nobody to point at.
Three ways in
Take the runway seriously, then move when you're ready.
Hosted & managed GP
We take over the environment as it stands — servers, identity, access, backups, the integrations that post overnight. GP keeps running properly for as long as you need it to.
Migration to Business Central
Planned against your calendar, not a vendor's quarter. Data, customisations, integrations and the people who have to use it on the Monday after cutover.
Modernisation
Power Platform, integrations, reporting and AI on top of whichever system you land on — so the migration buys you something, not just a supported version number.
AI, specifically
Three things we actually build — not a banner.
Every partner added an AI page last year. Here is precisely what we deliver, so you can judge whether it's worth your time.
- 01
Copilot in Dynamics 365 and Business Central
The AI features already sitting inside your licence, configured properly and actually adopted — sensible data boundaries, the right people enabled, and training so it gets used rather than switched on and forgotten.
- 02
Agents on Power Platform and Copilot Studio
Custom agents against your own data and processes. We build on Power Platform for enterprise and government clients today, including a live correspondence portal and case-routing system for a county tax authority.
- 03
Operations agents
The one we're proudest of, because we run it ourselves. An agent that reads inbound support mail, classifies it by severity against real runbooks, spots the integration job that silently didn't run last night, and surfaces the three things a human actually needs to decide today. We'll show you ours before we build you one.
Track record
Thirty years of Dynamics. Some of it under real pressure.
Professional sports finance teams closing the month on deadline. An international football confederation running multi-entity books across borders. A county government answering to auditors and the public. The infrastructure has to hold.
No charge, no obligation
Get a dated plan for your GP estate.
We'll look at what you're actually running — versions, customisations, integrations, and the infrastructure underneath — and give you a written runway: what breaks first, what it costs to hold, and when you'd want to move.
- An inventory of your GP environment and everything integrated to it
- The specific risks between now and 2029, dated
- What it takes to run GP safely in the meantime
- A migration window that fits your close calendar, not ours
Or email info@confidentclouds.com. We'll come back with a time, not a sequence of marketing emails.