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Microsoft modifies and extends Windows and Office maintenance
Microsoft announced Thursday a change to the Windows and Office 365 ProPlus services in order to give organizations more time to perform upgrades.
The announcement of Jared Spataro, Microsoft's vice president for Office and Windows Marketing, has been nuanced, with many implications for computer stores. However, this may have been somewhat encouraging for organizations that have undergone so many changes in the past with Windows-as-a-Service and Office.
Extended Office 365 ProPlus Support
For example, this announcement marked a sharp decline in Microsoft's firm declaration of truncated Office 365 ProPlus service support for users of the long-term Windows 10, Windows Server 2016, and Windows 8.1 and earlier maintenance channel . announced in February. Office 365 ProPlus is the suite of Office applications sold with Office 365 subscriptions.
Office 365 ProPlus support on these systems was scheduled to end on January 14, 2020. These are Microsoft's revised support dates for Office 365 ProPlus announced by Spataro on Thursday:
- Office 365 ProPlus will continue to be supported on Windows 8.1 to January 2023, end of support date for Windows 8.1.
- Office 365 ProPlus will also continue to be supported on Windows Server 2016 until October 2025.
The end date for Windows Server 2016 support is January 11, 2027. As a result, Microsoft does not align the Windows Server end-of-service date with the support end date. Office 365 ProPlus. The end of support means that no other security update will arrive for the product, which is an important step for IT professionals.
The Spataro announcement did not mention the details of the support for the 2019 perpetual license product, which is expected to be released this year. Perpetual license Office products, unlike Office 365 ProPlus suites, are not frequently updated by Microsoft. However, in February, Microsoft indicated that Office 2019 support would be truncated by about three years (that is, it would only be supported for seven years instead of the usual 10 years of support). It will also work only on Windows 10. Apparently, there is no change on this front, based on Spataro's announcement.
Office 365 Services connections
Microsoft also specified in April 2017 that only the Office 2019 or Office 365 ProPlus customers in "mainstream" support phase (the first five years) would be able to connect to Office 365 services, such as connecting to OneDrive, Outlook and Skype for Business. applications. Users of other perpetually licensed Office suites, such as Office 2016, would not be lucky under this support policy and would lose connections to Office 365 services on October 13, 2020, Microsoft said at the time. .
According to Spataro's announcement, Microsoft now grants Office 2016 users an extension of three years from that date.
"To give you more time to make a full transition to the cloud, we are now modifying this strategy and will continue to support Office 2016 connections with Office 365 services until October 2023," he said. written.
Windows 7 Extended Security Updates
Windows 7 Service Pack 1 users are supported until January 14, 2020. However, according to the announcement made by Microsoft on Thursday, some companies will have the option of continuing to use Office 365 ProPlus up to ### In January 2023 if they use a new Windows 7. The extended security update program that Spataro has just announced, although the program may not be available yet.
The Windows 7 Extended Security Updates program extends support for Windows 7 SP1 over three years, which implies that security updates will continue to be released for the operating system. However, the program will have a cost. It will be sold "per device and the price will increase each year," said the announcement of Microsoft, without specifying details.
The program will only be available to users of Windows 7 Professional and Enterprise editions who have volume licensing agreements (which require at least five users or devices). Microsoft will offer discounts to organizations that also have Software Assurance coverage. Software Assurance is an annuity offering that upgrades the next version of the software during the period.
No additional details on the Windows 7 Extended Security Updates program have been provided. The announcement from Microsoft had suggested that the company will share more information during its Ignite event later this month.
In July, Microsoft announced a similar program of "extended security updates" for Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008, although Software Assurance is required for servers covered by this program. This extended security update program does not incur costs for an additional three years of patch management if workloads are moved to Azure VMs. However, if organizations retain their on-premises workloads, Microsoft charges 75 percent of the total license fee each year to receive support for extended security updates.
Windows 10 Extended Service
Thursday's announcement from Microsoft has actually created another Windows 10 option for managing updates. In this case, Microsoft offers a 30-month (2.5 year) support period between Windows 10 updates, which will come into effect later this month. However, the 30-month support period only applies to users of the supported Windows 10 Enterprise and Education editions and is only available if they follow the September channel update template. The Windows model as a service for Microsoft for Windows 10 includes biannual updates, called "channel", which usually take place in March and September and involve a new version number of the operating system.
Companies that use Windows 10 March operating system updates will still have 18 months of support for this version of the operating system until they have to upgrade the operating system or risk no longer receiving security updates. Microsoft will segment its March versions along this path starting from the version of Windows 10 version 1903, which probably means that this option will be available in March 2019.
Nothing changes for Windows 10 Pro or Home Edition users and Office 365 ProPlus users, who continue to benefit from 18 months of support for a given operating system version, which the update of the operating system arrived in March or September.
Microsoft summarized these changes in the following table:
According to Spataro, Microsoft has made this change – 30 months of support for September followers and 18 months of support for March followers – to add "more time and flexibility" to organizations. However, like all Windows statements as a service, IT professionals are puzzled because they are probably still on the edge of the latest Microsoft Windows 10 and Office statements.
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