Legacy Debt: Don’t get stuck with zero support for your on-premise system
December 2023 Update:
Products such as Dynamics CRM 4.0 and Dynamics CRM 2011 lost all support (including Extended Support)
in 2018 and 2021, respectively. Others have had their support extended. The latest support deadlines are below:
Dynamics CRM 2013: Mainstream Support ended in 2019. Extended Support ends in January 2024
Dynamics CRM 2015: Mainstream Support ended in 2020. Extended Support ends in January 2025
Dynamics CRM 2016: Mainstream Support ended in 2021. Extended Support ends in January 2026
Microsoft support lifecycle webpage links:
There are a number of companies I am working with who are looking to move their Microsoft Dynamics CRM on-Premise server to the cloud.
Some were installed as far back as 2008 (Dynamics CRM 4.0) and are completely unsupported now.
If anything went wrong with them, there would be zero support from Microsoft and very few engineers out there who know how to fix things.
In fact, the companies that installed many them are no longer around.
Can you imagine? 2008?
Barack Obama became President for the first time; Boris Johnson pipped Ken Livingstone to become London Mayor. Lewis Hamilton won his first Formula One
title and Heathrow’s Terminal 5 was opened.
In the technology world, Satoshi Nakamoto first proposed the creation of a cryptocurrency called Bitcoin.
Github and Airbnb were founded, Spotify hadn’t launched yet in the UK – and Apple launched their App Store.
It feels like ancient history.
It’s not as if these companies are not doing well. And Dynamics CRM 4.0 was a great product, it was actually the first deployment that I did for a client back in 2009.
Tech challenge
But these companies know that they need to move to the cloud, and this becomes a tech challenge – and warning to other companies with similar
legacy products of the issues that may be faced.
It is the Legacy Debt and it is very real.
Part of the issue is the desire to retain all the data, such as sales and customer data, from all the way back. In order to do that, there
would need to be an extensive and expensive series of multiple migrations, importing to new versions through to the relevant one.
Custom solutions
There have been many years of custom solutions and finance system integration that need to be figured out, and re-engineered.
Much more cost-effective and less time-consuming than a “lift and shift” move from the server room to the cloud, is to use a combination of
Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Model-driven Power Apps.
The aim becomes to start from scratch, so that current needs are built in the cloud, a thoroughly modern secure system that drives productivity.
It will cost around 25% less and, I am convinced, in a relatively short amount of time, these companies will be flying.
Their employees will feel like they are driving a Tesla compared to an Austin Allegro (which, by the way, was voted worst car of all time in 2008).
If you’re stuck with old legacy systems and are looking to find the right way forward for your organisation, contact us here at
Solutions Shared right now...
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About the Author
John Clark
Founder | Microsoft Dynamics 365 & Power Platform Consultant, Solutions Shared Ltd