Amid much publicity, Microsoft stopped providing security updates and technical support for Windows XP in April 2014.
On July 14, 2015, Microsoft will withdraw its support for Windows Server 2003 which could have major implications for businesses.
Many will have already migrated over to Windows 2008 or 2012, but there are still a surprising number of companies that are yet to begin their migration away from Windows Server 2003.
It is estimated that 22m Windows 2003 Servers are still running worldwide.
There are major security implications for those still using the old version of Windows Servers, so the countdown is now on to migrate.
What does this mean in practice for businesses?
End of support for Windows Servers 2003 could have a dramatic impact on your business.
It will mean no more patches or security updates, creating compliance issues that are not in line with industry regulations and cause major security risks.
Also if you are still running Windows Server 2003 software, it is likely to be running on hardware that is at least seven years old and outside the manufacturer’s warranty – this is not an ideal place for your key business data to be stored.
If a company chooses not to migrate, the decision to stay put is likely to cost more in the end, maintenance costs for ageing hardware may increase and there is a risk of the system crashing altogether.
The process of migrating from Windows 2003 needn’t be difficult with some careful planning and consideration.
The starting point is to determine whether you have any remaining Windows 2003 Servers and identify their use – i.e. are they used for file storage, database servers or custom applications? Once this has been established, a number of upgrade options become available.
If you wish to maintain an in-house server, modern server hardware offers many performance benefits over older servers and Windows Server 2012 offers many enhancements from Windows Server 2003 such as Hyper-V enabling you to run multiple Windows Servers on a single physical server – reducing hardware costs, improvement Remote Desktop and improved support for hardware and storage devices.
Windows Server 2012 supports new versions of software packages, such as Sage (which no longer support Windows Server 2003).
If you choose cloud computing instead of a traditional in-house server there are many options to consider such as hosting your own server in a datacentre, using a cloud server service such as Microsoft Azure or using Software as a Service provider (Sage now offer this for Accounts with the Sage One package).
Whichever route you choose, we are now on the final countdown to July 14 when support ends – so the time to start planning is now!
