As you may be aware, there are a number of Microsoft products which will go out of support during the coming year. We want to help you to avoid the risk of running unsupported products in your environment and to assist with IT planning for 2010. The objective of this letter is to highlight the potential risks involved and to outline options available to mitigate these risks.
What’s the situation?
Windows 2000 and Windows 2000 Server are approaching 10 years since their launch and both products will go out of support on July 13 2010.
Windows XP was launched back in 2001. While support for the product will continue for a few more years, Service pack 2 will go out of support on July 13 2010. While Microsoft will no longer provide free security updates for Windows XP SP2, we will still provide limited troubleshooting on unsupported service pack versions. More information regarding the service pack policy can be found here.
If any of these products will continue to be used in your environment after July 13th, you may be exposed to potential risks.
What are the potential risks?
· Unsupported and unpatched environments are vulnerable to virus attacks such as Conficker. Microsoft provides free security patches for supported products, but not for unsupported products.
· Problem resolution services are provided for supported products. In the event that you encounter an issue/outage in your environment on an unsupported product, our engineers may not be able to help resolve this until you’ve upgraded to a supported level.
What are the available options?
1. Do nothing - accept the risk of no security patches and no problem resolution support for these products running in your environment.
2. Purchase a custom support agreement to remain on the end of life products - If for any reason, you decide to remain on these products, you have the option to purchase a custom support agreement. As a condition of buying a custom support agreement, we ask our customers to put in place a plan to migrate off the unsupported platform. The costs of custom support agreements are significantly higher than regular support and rise yearly as the number of customers remaining on the end of life platform decreases.
3. Upgrade
a. For Windows XP, the options are to either upgrade to the next Service Pack, SP3 or to upgrade to the new OS, Windows 7. This is an ideal opportunity to take advantage of the new features of Windows 7 to improve security, end user productivity and supportability. Extended support for Windows 7 will be provided until 2020. Microsoft Services have a packaged upgrade offering available to help you or your preferred partner to achieve a fast, successful upgrade to maximize the benefits of Windows 7.
b. For Windows Server 2000, the options are to upgrade to Windows Server 2003 or 2008. Windows Server 2008 will be supported until 2018 and offers many advantages, particularly in the areas of security and manageability. Microsoft Services can also assist you to accelerate the upgrade and operate a stable, supported platform.
Where can you find more information?
Full details of the product support lifecycle are available on the Microsoft website: http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle
Full details of how Microsoft Services can help you to design, deploy and support your Microsoft solutions are also available on the website: