Epicor is ending On Premises hosting for Prophet 21 (along with several other major products) with its final P21 iteration releasing May 2028 (version 2028.1)
Wondering what that means for your business? How is support changing? Not sure if a cloud migration is right for your company?
Although Epicor has been moving in this direction for several years, this is still a major shift for teams using Prophet 21 as their ERP system. With this announcement, many teams are reassessing strategy, infrastructure, and operational readiness.
Our role is to help you understand the implications, evaluate your options, and move forward with confidence, without disruption to your business.
This is a big change, but we’ve been helping companies on P21 make this transition for years. In this post, we’ll walk through the details about what this announcement means, what’s changing, and how to plan your best steps forward for optimal growth and sustainability.
What’s Changing?
The Announcement:
- Epicor has announced the final on-premise release for Prophet 21 coming in May 2028 with version 2028.1.
- After May 2028, no new features or enhancements will be delivered to on-premises customers, and only cloud customers will receive updates.
Who Is Affected?
- All on-premise, private datacenter, and self-hosted P21 customers.
- This includes perpetual license holders and those hosted by unaffiliated providers, such as Azure or AWS. If your P21 system is not hosted by Epicor, you are on-premises, and this list includes you.
Timeline:
- Final on-premise release of Prophet 21: May 2028.
- Active Support through June 30, 2029. This period will include security updates, critical patches, and compliance and regulatory updates. You still have access to Epicor’s P21 knowledge base and tech support. Epicor will continue to investigate previously unreported issues.
- After July 2029, Epicor will move to a Sustaining Support model. Under this model, as far as we know, there will be no new releases, no security updates, no critical patch updates, and no compliance or regulatory updates.
What Does This Mean for You?
Each phase of support will change the options that customers have for their on-premise installation. This is part of a broader industry trend that most major ERP vendors are moving to cloud-only models and have been for some time. 99.9% of new customers that come to us or are new to P21 are on the cloud and have been for the most part for the last couple of years at least.
What You Lose
- No new features or enhancements after 2028.1.
- Security, compliance, and critical patch updates end after June 2029.
What You Keep
- You can keep running your on-premise system.
- Access to the EpicCare knowledge base and limited technical support continues.
No Immediate Shutdown
This is not an “end-of-life” or forced shutdown. Your system will keep running, but it won’t evolve, and your support options will become much more limited. It is important to remember that there is a difference between technically feasible and commercially practical.
An example of a common issue that businesses may face: Many of our customers have operations in Mexico, and currently, the accounting module evolves along with changing international regulations. This includes areas like tax compliance and accounting regulations. Especially for larger companies, this may quickly start causing major issues because you simply can’t predict the regulatory environment going forward. It is not as simple as staying in a vacuum with a minimally or non-supported ERP that will never be patched again.
Even for features like ransomware insurance, security audits, or government compliance, it’s unclear how many of these will be supported going forward.
Common Concerns
Customization & Database Access
Many worry about losing control or customizations. While cloud hosting may not carry the exact same level of customization that on-premises installations have historically had, Epicor is adding some extensibility features to the cloud and has been progressively updating the customization toolkit to help close that gap. At this point, the difference is about 95-98% between Cloud and On-Premises installations.
It is true, however, that it will be significantly more difficult when a company has been on P21 for a decade or more and must take 15 years of customization and retool it in a short period of time so that it becomes sustainable in the cloud, as opposed to a company with P21 for the first time.
On the flip side, one of the perks of this transition lies in the level of database accessibility. Having direct access to your SQL database is a great thing…until it’s not. And what I mean by that is so many times within a company, someone will make an update statement or a change in the SQL database, and it will break P21.
So the upside to not having that database access and just having read-only access with Cloud hosting is that it reduces the instances of this type of thing happening and crippling your system for some length of time. You will still have access to your data; you just can’t manipulate that data in any way in the actual database.
Performance
Cloud performance can vary; it’s not always faster or slower, but it more so depends on your setup.
Cost & Pricing
Cloud is subscription-based with ongoing fees. You’re not buying hardware to support your ERP system per se. So you’re going to have an ongoing cost just like you do today.
And what does that look like if you opt to go with sustaining support and stay on-premises long term versus going to the cloud? We have no idea. Here’s what I would tell you. Contact your CAM, which your customer account manager at Epicor, and ask them.
There are different levels of partnership in the Epicor ecosphere, and we’re a services partner. We’re not a sales partner or a reseller, so we don’t have access to pricing. We don’t have any incentives to get customers to buy stuff on P21. That’s on purpose. We want our relationship to err on the side of our customers. So, as a consequence, we don’t have any special insights into what pricing will look like going forward.
Security & Compliance
Generally speaking, people go to the Cloud because they want security and compliance. Now, if Epicor is running the SOC 2 or whatever compliance standards that they’re hitting, and you’re not running that, you’re basically by extension graduating that because that’s the direction you’re going. But everybody’s case is different, so it’s a very case-by-case discussion.
There are certain industries out there that will always have unique requirements because of who their customers or their vendors are or what products they’re selling. Because of that, it doesn’t make sense to make blanket statements about your level of security in the Cloud versus On-Premises. Cloud offers strong security, but some industries have special requirements, and ultimately, these need to be discussed case-by-case.
How We’re Helping Customers
Our Approach
We’re here to help you navigate this transition. Whether you move to the cloud, stay on-prem for now, or need a hybrid approach, it’s our job to help clarify the environment and advocate for you as a customer and P21 user team.
To be honest, this transition is not necessarily a good or bad thing; it’s simply the reality of the ERP landscape. These are the circumstances, and it’s our job to help you move forward in the best possible way for you and your business. Which has always been our philosophy: how do we help you get where you need to be? Not what’s not what’s best for Atlas and not what’s best for Epicor.
What We’re Doing
We are in the process of releasing a new tooling package where we can deeply monitor your P21 for a period of time, understand everything that’s touching it, and then fill in all the blanks to help create the most comprehensive roadmap for your company’s future with (or without) P21.
We are not going to leave you on an island. We’re not going to say, because your P21 is done this way, you’ve now got a scarlet letter. That’s not how we roll. So if you feel like remaining on premises with sustaining support is ultimately where you’re going to be for the foreseeable future, we’ve dealt with customers in the same situation before. They didn’t want our help migrating off P21. They essentially wanted hospice support to get them through managing their unsupported version of Prophet 21 until they could migrate to their main ERP system.
And we did that. And then when they were off P21, we thanked them for being a great customer, and we haven’t heard from them since. And obviously never will, because they are no longer on P21 anymore. If that’s where you are, we’ll meet you where you are. And we’ll give you our honest opinion whenever you ask for it.
Our goal is to support your business, not to push you into a decision before you’re ready.
Next Steps & How to Get Help
On-Premises customers wishing to receive new versions and full support for Prophet 21 will need to migrate to the Epicor Cloud. But that isn’t an insurmountable task, and it doesn’t have to change the core of how you do business.
This is how we come in:
- Assessment & Planning: We’ll help you understand your current environment, customizations, and what a move would look like.
- Migration Roadmaps: We create tailored migration plans, including timelines, cost estimates, and risk assessments.
- Customization Review: We’ll help you inventory and prioritize customizations, and advise on what can/can’t move to the cloud.
- Support for Staying On-Prem: If you need to stay on-prem for now, we’ll help you maximize stability and security for as long as possible.
- Education & Communication: We’ll keep you updated on changes, options, and best practices.
Have More Questions?
Change is hard, but with the right support, you can make the best decision for your company’s future. If you have more questions beyond what we addressed today, reach out to us. We’ll schedule some time to just talk you through what we know.
We work through this process on a regular basis, and we’d love to help you if we can.
