Windows Server 2003 End Of Support
As of September 2014, there were an estimated 23.8 million instances of Windows Server 2003 in operation. Windows Server 2003 reaches its end of life and end of support (EOS) on July 14, 2015. This is a great opportunity to help businesses look to the future, and understand that this EOS marks an opportunity for them to not only consider their OS, but the entire platform including the applications residing upon it.
All good things have to come to an end, while Windows Server 2003 will continue to operate after July 14, 2015, support for this operating system will end. This will have an impact to a large number of businesses and time is running out.
What End Of Support means to Businesses
No updates : 37 critical updates were released in 2013 for Windows Server 2003/R2 under Extended Support. No updates will be developed or released after end of support.
No compliance: Lack of compliance with various standards and regulations can be devastating. This may include various regulatory and industry standards for which compliance can no longer be achieved. For example, lack of compliance with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards might mean companies such as Visa and MasterCard will no longer do business with you. Or, the new cost of doing business will include paying catastrophic penalties and astronomically high transaction fees.
No safe haven: Both virtualised and physical instances of Windows Server 2003 are vulnerable and would not pass a compliance audit. Microsoft Small Business Server (SBS) 2003 servers are also affected.
Staying put will cost more in the end. Maintenance costs for aging hardware will also increase. Added costs will be incurred for intrusion detection systems, more advanced firewalls, network segmentation, and so on—simply to isolate Windows Server 2003 servers.
Many applications will also cease to be supported, once the operating system they are running on is unsupported. This includes all Microsoft applications.
Whatever your migration requirements are, don’t delay any further – act now and start your migration immediately.
Contact us for free consultation.