Microsoft Extends Support for Legacy Products

Published: August 30, 2006

by Alex Woodie

Companies that use older Microsoft software, such as Windows NT 4 and Exchange 5.5, received a reprieve this week when the vendor announced a new plan to extend support for legacy products, indefinitely in some cases. Microsoft says the changes to the Custom Support Agreements (CSA) program, including per-device support pricing, will help its large business customers better manage their IT environments and plan migrations at their own pace. But the changes mean increased fees for some.

The changes Microsoft made to its CSA program Monday are the biggest since May 2004, when it unveiled the CSA plan and increased Extended Support from two to five years. Extended Support kicks in for Microsoft products following the end of the products' Mainstream Support phase, which encompasses the first five years of a product's life.

Prior to this week's announcement, Microsoft's business users could sign two-year CSAs following the end of the Extended Phase of a product. With this week's announcement, Microsoft is no longer putting a cap on the number of years that it will continue to support a product, including writing hotfixes for security problems and providing paid support.

The other major change concerns Microsoft's pricing of CSAs. Before, Microsoft charged a flat rate for customers entering into a CSA following the end of the 10-year Mainstream and Extended Support timeframes. Now, Microsoft will be charging for CSAs on a per-device basis.

The new per-device pricing will benefit some customers, but others will end up paying more under the new scheme. For example, under the previous flat-fee system, a company with 10 Windows NT servers under support of a CSA contract paid the same as a company with 100 Windows NT servers, which wasn't exactly fair. Now, the company with an abundance of products under CSA contracts will pay more, and those with fewer devices will pay less, which is a more equitable arrangement.

Only business with top-tier "premiere" support agreements--primarily large businesses--are eligible for the new CSA contracts. Users of developer tools are also eligible for the new CSA system, according to Microsoft. Consumer, hardware, and multimedia products are handled under a different product support lifecycle that includes the same five years of mainstream support as business software and development tools, but which doesn't include the five-year extended support phase. Instead, Microsoft offers a three-year "self-help online support" phase, for a total of eight years of support, for these products.

The new CSA program is expected to impact several widely used products, including Windows NT 4, Exchange Server 5.5, and Windows XP SP1. January marks the beginning of the fourth year of CSA support for Windows NT 4, which was first released in December 1997, reached the end of its mainstream support in December 2002, and the end of extended support in December 2004. January 1, 2007, also marks the beginning of the second year of CSA support for Exchange 5.5, which was first released in February 1998, reached the end of mainstream support in December 2003, and reached the end of extended support in January of this year. Windows XP SP1 enters its first year of CSA support this October, when standard support for this service pack ends. (Microsoft commits to supporting an older service pack for at least 12 months following the release of a new service pack for a particular product, although it may extend that timeframe.)

The other requirement for entering into a CSA agreement is that users must have a migration plan in place for moving off the product for which the CSA contract is signed, and they must present their migration plans to Microsoft before the vendor will approve it.

Microsoft does not publicly disclose pricing for its CSA agreements, and did not specify exactly which products will be eligible for the extended agreements.

For end-of-support-date and lifecycle information on particular Microsoft products, check out http://support.microsoft.com/gp/lifeselect.

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