The numerous reasons why every company should look to move their ERP on-premise solutions to the Cloud has been laid out within our ‘Why Move to the Cloud?’ resource that can be accessed here. Additionally, for Dynamics 365 Business Central there are further incentives and benefits for companies to move to the Cloud, such as:
In addition to the functionality and integration benefits gained from moving to D365 Business Central, you will also continue to benefit from Microsoft’s product support offerings as you will always be on the latest version. Microsoft will no longer be supporting the older, on-premise versions of Dynamics NAV, in line with their product lifecycle, as follows:
Product | Mainstream support end date | Extended support end date |
Dynamics NAV 2013 and 2013 R2 | 09/01/2018 | 10/01/2023 |
Dynamics NAV 2015 | 14/01/2020 | 14/01/2025 |
Dynamics NAV 2016 | 13/04/2021 | 14/04/2026 |
Dynamics NAV 2017 | 11/01/2022 | 11/01/2027 |
Dynamics NAV 2018 | 10/01/2023 | 11/01/2028 |
*The extended support period allows customers to continue to submit support incidents, but only security-related fixes will be released during this period i.e. product-related hotfixes will not be developed.
Please note: if you are on an older version of NAV such as NAV 2009, you are on an unsupported and vulnerable system with no access to security updates. Please contact Tisski as we can provide you an upgrade path to move you on to a supported version or, better yet, move you to the online version of Business Central so you’ll always remain on a supported version.
Over the last two years we have seen a huge game changer in how we, as partners, can develop and customise your Dynamics NAV/Business Central solutions. Gone are the days of C/AL coding where we can modify the out-of-the-box objects. All development, since the version of Business Central released on 15 October 2019 must now be done as AL extensions, which is applied on top of the out-of-the-box objects.
The first stage of any upgrade is to carry out analysis of your NAV or Business Central on-premise solution and identify what modifications you have. We then:
Now that we know what modifications are still required and we’ve identified the design of the modifications that need developing, we carry out the following:
Now that we have the required modifications as an AL extension and we have the tool to migrate custom data from your old database, we are ready to commence the upgrade. We will:
We will fully system test the Business Central online modifications. Once completed and evidenced, we will release the system to you, providing training to the UAT users in advance of UAT and offering support throughout UAT and Data Assurance, dealing with any issues that arise.
When you are happy and have signed off both UAT and data assurance, we commence go-live. The remaining users are trained up and we carry out the upgrade stage from above for the final time completing your journey to the Cloud.
There really is no better time to carry out what would be your last ever upgrade project!