Windows Server 2003 End of Life Is July 14th, 2015

Microsoft has officially announced it will no longer support Windows Server 2003 starting July 14th, 2015. This date is based on Microsoft lifecycle support policies, which allow five years of extended support and five years of mainstream support.

Microsoft has confirmed that no exception to the policy will be made for WS03, as this process is considered a normal procedure in the software lifecycle. The company strongly recommends that customers using WS03 allocate budget for migration immediately and migrate to Windows Server 2012 R2 servers or Microsoft Azure to ensure the stability of work and taking advantage of the advanced technical features.

The company has clarified that customers who continue to run WS03 will no longer receive security patches or updates, any paid or free technical help as well as no online updates for these servers. This process is considered a normal procedure in the software lifecycle.

Migration from WS03 gives customers the opportunity to improve infrastructure and application performance, increase reliability, and achieve higher levels of user satisfaction. By migrating either to the cloud or to the latest version of Windows Server2012 R2, customers can ensure that they have access to state of the art features and technology innovation.

Microsoft has warned that after the end date of WS03 support, customers’ valuable data and work environment will be subject to many risks, such as:

- Security Risks: Unsupported work environments can be subject to all kinds of security dangers with the vast increase in the number of pirates and hackers, therefore any gap that will be discovered cannot be patched properly.
- Compliance Risks: Compliance violations are expensive & can hinder a company’s ability to do business. PCI & HIPAA regulations both require that customers run operating systems with current patches
- More Expensive Ownership Expenses: Companies spend more money to support old systems which are not supported by the producing company.

With Windows Server 2012 R2 you can scale to run your most important workloads with robust recovery options. They’ll achieve value quickly with a wide range of cost-effective, high-performance storage options and simplified delivery of multi-tenant IT services. You can build, deploy, operate, and monitor applications on premises and in the cloud. Empower users with secure access to corporate resources on the devices they choose.

Azure enables customers to extend their on-premises investments into the public cloud and choose from infrastructure or platform services, providing flexibility to choose the best solution for their needs.