As of 1 June, Microsoft is enhancing its support lifecycle policy by lengthening the extended and online self-help support for business and developer products.
Andrew Lees, Microsoft corporate VP of server and tools marketing, says mainstream support remains at five years, while the extended support phase has been increased from two years to five years. The online self-help support phase has been increased from eight years or more, to 10 years or more for business and developer products.
This means that customers now have a minimum total of 10 years of mainstream and extended support for business and developer products, including security updates and paid incident support. The updated policy also provides customers with increased support for IT infrastructure security assistance.
Lees says the updated Microsoft support lifecycle addresses the need for clear and predictable product support roadmaps while trying to minimise the likelihood of future lifecycle adjustments.
The updated support lifecycle policy primarily affects business products like the Office suite and Server products, while developer products include Visual Studio and .Net.
Products like Windows 2000, Windows NT4.0 and SQL 2000 are not affected by the lifecycle extension policy.
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