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Company type | Public |
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Nasdaq: GPSI [1] | |
Industry | Information technology |
Founded | 1981 |
Founder | Joseph Larson |
Defunct | 2001 |
Fate | Acquired by Microsoft |
Headquarters | |
Area served | United States |
Key people |
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Number of employees | 2,200 |
Great Plains Software, Inc. was an accounting software company located in Fargo, North Dakota, whose products focused on small to medium-sized businesses. [2] It was founded in 1981, [3] went public in 1997, [4] and was sold to Microsoft in 2001. [3] [5] [6] Prior to its acquisition, it had 2,200 employees. [2]
The company was founded in 1981 by Joseph Larson, who also served as the company's first president. [7] Doug Burgum, who later went on to become a future Governor of North Dakota and United States Secretary of the Interior, joined the company in March 1983 as a shareholder. [7] Burgum provided seed capital for the company; he bought out its other investors in early 1984 and became its new president. [8] Larson continued to serve as a company director until its acquisition. [7]
The company grew to about 170 employees by 1987, [9] and had around 290 employees by 1989. [10] It earned about $300 million in annual sales and had its IPO in 1997, after using the Internet to help it expand beyond North Dakota. [11] In 1999 the company acquired Match Data Systems, a development team in the Philippines. [12] In 2000, after several layoffs, it announced its acquisition by Microsoft for $1.1 billion. [13] The purchase was completed in 2001. [3]
Its products were rebranded "Microsoft Dynamics GP" in 2005, [6] [14] part of Microsoft Dynamics 365 as of 2016.