New policy for Dynamics GP service pack support

Microsoft recently announced that the Dynamics products service packs will now be supported for 24 months after a new service pack is released. Previously service packs were supported for 12 months after a new service pack release. The new policy with key dates is outlined on Microsoft’s Longer Support Timelines for Key Microsoft Dynamics® Service Packs page.

What this means to Dynamics GP customers is that they now have more time to test new service packs before implementing them, while Microsoft still ‘officially’ supports the service pack they are on. Of course, there may still be many times when the answer to a support issue is, ‘you need to upgrade to the latest service pack’, but ultimately, this is a good thing for customers. Something else I like is that this brings support for the Dynamics family of products in line with support for the rest of Microsoft products. 

One important note is that this has no impact on the overall lifecycle policy for Dynamics products. So no matter when the last service pack for a product comes out, mainstream support for the entire version will end 5 years after the product was released. For more details on support end dates, take a look at my blog post with support end dates for GP 6.0 through 10.0.