Extended Support
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Extended SupportThis is interesting if it's true. Is there new support for NT 4 and Exchange 5.5? According to the report, which I haven't been able to confirm on the Microsoft site, there is a new set of Custom Support Agreements (CSAs) for large customers that will allow them to get support for these platforms. This could be important for a number of companies that are stuck with legacy applications and no time to upgrade.
I was in this boat a few years ago when support for NT 4.0 was supposed to end. One small phone application was running on an NT 4.0 platform and there wasn't an upgrade from the vendor. They'd actually moved away from the product and wanted to sell us a huge new version, new features, with a nice new 5 or 6 digit price tag.
We weren't interested, but a number of mandates about supportability and more importantly, security patches, had come down outlawing NT 4.0. We had six months to do something, but no budget, no people, and we'd be down to 3 months by the time we got things moved through the company. We ended up doing nothing and gambling.
I know many companies have been in similar situations with upgrades, but needing support. I'd like to see Microsoft either offload this to a 3rd party (and license the code) or offer these CSAs to everyone. Working with the old code would be a great way to train new hires and give them a sense of the history of Windows. It would also be good for those career programmers at MS that don't want to continually drive themselves forward at 80mph every week.
Steve Jones
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Upgrading is costly. You have hit on exactly one of the main reasons why the open source community has become so powerful in business influences.
It's not because it's free. It's because you have a stable and predictable upgrade path. The community is not looking to leave you with a broken application if there's no way to bring your apps along, and migrate. If you did want to stay with the old ones, you have the source code, and could patch it yourself if you really need to.
If you could keep your running list of services down, chances are you could reduce your attack surface down where you might never need to upgrade.
Just my two cents,
John
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I don't know about whether trumpeting open source is a suitable way to start commenting on this thread, so I'll leave it to the open source fanatics.
However, what I would like to add is that suprisingly one can still buy spare parts for cars about 3 or 4 decades older than the oldest version of windows, now doesn't that tell you something.
Max
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Not sure I agree with the Open Source argument. It does allow you to choose when you upgrade, at least theoretically since you have the code, but if you don't have people to read/work on the code, and most people don't, then you're still stuck with your support vendor.
The reality is that most companies need a support company behind them to help with the code. They can't get enough good people that can do it, even with source. If that's the case, the same support issues appear with other companies, open source or not. You only want to support xx versions to be profitable.
The nice thing about Open Source is that if enough people don't upgrade, someone can start a business providing support for older versions. Maybe forcing MS (and other companies) to make their source code open is a bad idea, but perhaps they would be forced to license the code to xx companies that provide support? Might be a nice startup business for older MS developers that want to work on those products.
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I prefer to write my own APPLICATIONS so I don't need to rely on a vendor to upgrade when the time comes. If you need to purchase from a vendor, buy from a vendor that is a Microsoft partner and keeps the application up to date and compatible with the latest OS.
Joshua Perry
http://www.greenarrow.net -
About a year ago, we contacted a M$ partner to sit down and discuss our upgrade from NT and 5.5. A later meeting with a Redmond representative from M$ in attendance, this subject came up about the extended support offer. After some hemming and hawing, he finally said it would cost about $50,000 per year for us to get the extended support. This came on top of the now $180- 200K project cost. I wonder if it is the same cost now?
I am now about 2/3rds the way through phase one of our upgrade with a budget of about $20k. This will be the hardest part except for the Exchange upgrade. Yes, we are still using NT and W2K but also have W23K about to go into production mode.
Downside is, because we still have NT, I have to block nearly all attachments coming in. I am upgrading our AV so that will now be better covered.
As far as Open source goes, I installed my first OpenOffice this past weekend. While I will reserve my comments until I see how it all works out, my first thought was WOW!
I'd support releasing the code to a 3rd party for reasonable paid support even if M$ got a piece of the action.
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