[dbaust] Microsoft to Pull Plug on XP in Two Years - Computerworld
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- Date: Thu, 3 May 2012 17:00:48 +1000
Microsoft to Pull Plug on XP in Two Years - Computerworld
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9226394/Microsoft_to_Pull_Plug_on_XP_in_Two_Years
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Microsoft to pull plug on XP in 2 years
By Gregg Keizer
April 23, 2012 06:00 AM ET17 Comments. What's this?.Computerworld -
Microsoft has kicked off what it calls a "two-year countdown" to the
death of Windows XP and the Office 2003 productivity suite.
Separately, Microsoft announced that Windows Vista, the
problem-plagued operating system that never really took hold among
customers, exited mainstream support on April 10. In a product's
extended support phase, Microsoft provides security patches to
registered users but offers other fixes, including reliability and
stability updates, only to organizations that have support contracts
with the company.
Windows XP and Office 2003 will no longer be supported as of April 8,
2014, a company spokeswoman said in a recent blog post. On that date,
Microsoft will stop shipping security updates for both products.
At that point, XP will have become Microsoft's longest-lived operating
system. The company will have maintained the software for 12 years and
five months -- or about two and a half years longer than it usually
supports an OS. It supported the previous record-holder, Windows NT,
for 11 years and five months.
Both XP and Office 2003 have been hugely successful. XP went on sale
in October 2001, and Office 2003 launched in October 2003. "Windows XP
and Office 2003 were great software releases, but the technology
environment has shifted," said Stella Chernyak, a Microsoft marketing
director.
Some customers will continue to run XP even after it is retired. About
16% of organizations "say they will have more than 5% of their users
still on XP even after support ends," according to Gartner analyst
Michael Silver, citing a survey his firm conducted in October 2011.
Not surprisingly, Microsoft wants users to upgrade to Windows 7 now.
"If your organization has not started the migration to a modern PC,
you are late," the company said, referring to data that indicates that
enterprise OS migrations take 18 to 32 months.
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