Support for Windows 10 has been extended again: September releases now have 30 months

In its ongoing efforts to encourage corporate customers to upgrade to Windows 10, Microsoft is reshaping its support and lifecycle plans. Support for some versions of Windows 10 is being expanded, and the company is offering new services to detect and resolve possible compatibility issues.

The new policy builds on and extends the commitments made in February of this year. Microsoft has developed two annual feature updates (the "Semi-Annual Channel", SAC) for Windows 10, one finalized in March (and shipped in April) and the other finalized in September (and shipped in October) . Initially, the company had promised 18 months of support for each feature update, a policy that would allow customers to postpone the deployment of feature updates or even skip some updates entirely. In the future, the September versions will see even longer support periods; for Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows 10 Education, each September release will receive 30 months of maintenance. In principle, an organization that sticks to the September versions could spend two years between feature updates.

Windows 10 Home, Pro and Pro for Workstations customers will continue to receive only 18 months of updates for the March and September versions.

This 30-month window is also applied retroactively to Enterprise and Education editions of all previously supported versions of Windows 10: 1607, 1703, 1709, and 1803.

As always, for customers who want even longer periods of service, LTSC (Long Term Servicing Channel) versions will be done every three years or so; These releases will receive traditional five-year support (during which security, reliability, and compatibility patches will be released) and five years of extended support (during which only security patches will be released).

More compatibility

Microsoft is also working to resolve compatibility issues with Windows 10. The Windows Analytics service, which provides an overview of device health, compatibility issues, updating and the upgrade, is being developed to a new Desktop Analytics service. This will extend application compatibility assessments, while helping to create pilot groups for update testing covering the full range of hardware and application configurations supported by an organization.

If an application compatibility issue is detected, Redmond offers a new service called Desktop App Assure. Customers will be able to deposit support tickets for application compatibility issues, and Microsoft will provide technical support to work with these customers until the issue is resolved.

Microsoft wants organizations to use Windows 10 with its constant stream of updates, and compatibility issues remain a major concern for customers. By providing tools to help organizations better identify compatibility issues and provide stronger support guarantees in the event of a problem, the company hopes to resolve these issues and remove them to justify compliance with Windows 7 or 8.1.

Microsoft is also extending Office 365 support in the opposite direction. In its announcement earlier this year, the company said that Office 365 ProPlus (the version on the same update track as Windows 10) would only be supported on Windows 10 SAC editions. This extension also extends to Windows 8.1, until January 2023, and to Windows Server 2016, until October 2025. These extensions correspond to the extended support of these operating systems.

A similar alignment is underway with Office 2016. Previously, as of October 2020, the Office 365 online services would require the use of ProPlus or Office 2019. As part of of the new policy, Office 2016 will also be supported until October 2023.

These changes are essentially a correction: Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2016, and Office 2016 all remain supported for a number of years, which creates a reasonable expectation that they remain compatible (with Office ProPlus and the online services) . This will now be the case.

Windows 7 stays on

And for customers still on Windows 7 and planning to stay beyond the end of extended support in January 2020, Microsoft offers a new system for receiving paid updates. The extended security updates of Windows 7 will provide three more years of security patches until January 2023. The paid security patches are not new to Microsoft, but the difference is that this extended support will be offered uniformly to all volumes. Windows 7 Professional and Enterprise Client License. It will be offered per device, the cost increasing each year. The Office 365 extended support described above also covers Windows 7 ESU machines, in addition to Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2016.