This is short article, written in question/answer/FAQ style to give IT Specialist/developer/programmer balanced top level information on Great Plains Accounting migration to Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains. If you have Great Plains Accounting as main accounting and ERP system you need to know some technical details on the migration to Great Plains and what is going on behind the scenes. As of right now it is reasonable to upgrade to Microsoft Great Plains 8.0

Is migration required? Not actually, but you have to consider these factors

• Great Plains Accounting is in phasing out -Great Plains Software began this process back in 1995, when it did introduce Great Plains Dynamics and then Great Plains Dynamics/CS+.
  

• Old Btrieve platform - Microsoft Business Solutions is pulling out all it's products from Btrive/Pervasive SQL.2000/Ctree.
  

• Following the Technology and Microsoft rules - Microsoft wants you to be on the newest platform and provides you the best support when you follow this rule
  

What is migration in the language of technology?

Migration reads Btrieve tables of Great Plains Accounting and moves the data to Microsoft Great Plains tables

Do I need consultant? As our experience indicates - you have to have a consultant to do GPA->Great Plains migration. There are two options to choose from

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• You can call Microsoft Business Solutions - they can do migration for you - they will ask you to forward them your btrieve files and they'll send you back the backup of SQL database where your migrated data sits with instructions on how to install Great Plains and restore data from backup
  

• You can use Great Plains VAR/Partner - in this case your cost is usually lower - but you need to do due diligence - find the partner who has experience and has done at least couple of migrations
  

Good luck with migration and if you have issues or concerns – we are here to help, we've done 200 migrations! If you want us to do the job - give us a call 1-866-528-0577! help@albaspectrum.com

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, based in Chicago, California, Arizona, Minnesota, Texas, Florida, New York, Washington, Georgia, Canada, UK, Australia and having locations in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com), he is CMA, Great Plains Certified Master, Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer. You can contact Andrew: andrewk@albaspectrum.com

akarasev@albaspectrum.com