Making a special exception to its support life-cycle policy, Microsoft will waive the hefty "non-security-related hotfix" fees for the first year of Exchange 5.5's "extended support" period, due to begin Jan. 1, 2004. This move gives the large percentage of Exchange customers who still have not upgraded from the older product more time to migrate to a newer version without risking the chance that they might not be able to obtain a fix for a critical bug.

More Breathing Room

Microsoft’s standard life-cycle policy put Exchange 5.5 customers in the position of either paying a US$30,000 extended support fee no later than Apr. 2004 or foregoing hotfixes for any non-security-related problems they might encounter after Jan. 1, 2004. Although Exchange 5.5 is on its fourth service pack and the product is mature enough that the probability of new show-stopping bugs and other incompatibilities is low, many customers felt uncomfortable taking this risk.

Because so many Exchange customers were in this predicament, Microsoft has made an exception to the extended support terms for Exchange 5.5 and announced it will waive the extended support fees for the first year of extended support. However, customers still need a Product Support Services (PSS) contract or must pay for per-incident support to receive non-security hotfix support. Furthermore, from Jan.1, 2005 to Dec. 31, 2005, the normal extended support fees will still apply.

Exchange Upgrades Lagging

The policy change reflects the reality that many customers are still running Exchange 5.5 and are having difficulty upgrading it quickly enough.

Exchange 5.5 first shipped in Jan. 1998 and was designed to run on Windows NT 4.0 Server. Exchange 5.5 came with its own user database, which was linked to NT 4.0 domain user accounts only to provide security for mailboxes and public folders. Exchange 2000, released in Sept. 2000, was designed to run on Windows 2000 and, instead of having its own user database, depends completely on Active Directory (AD) to store user and group information pertinent to Exchange.

Unfortunately for both Microsoft and its customers, the process of upgrading to AD has been slow for many reasons, some technical and others related to customers’ corporate politics and consensus-building processes, especially in large organizations. Until their AD migrations are finished, those customers are stuck with Exchange 5.5.

Microsoft hopes that improvements in Windows Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2003 (released to volume customers in June 2003) will induce these laggards to upgrade from NT 4.0 and Exchange 5.5, but customers have complained that they require more time.

Mainstream Support Ending Soon for Exchange 5.5

Microsoft first spelled out Exchange support policies in 2002, when it created a standardized product life-cycle policy documenting when various classes of software products would go off support. (See "New Support Life-Cycle Policy" on page 23 of the Nov. 2002 Update.) Under this policy, each version of a server application gets five years of mainstream support, followed by two more years of "extended" support, during which time Microsoft will help customers resolve problems and will create hotfixes to resolve bugs and some types of incompatibilities.

However, although Microsoft provides security-related hotfixes for free during each product’s extended support phase, customers must ante up US$30,000 (in addition to its normal Microsoft PSS contract fee) to receive extended support, and then another US$30,000 for each non-security-related custom hotfix they request from Microsoft.

Because Exchange 5.5 shipped well before the new life-cycle policy was established, Microsoft set its standard support cut-off at an even more generous Dec 31, 2003, end date, nearly six years from initial ship. Extended support continues until Dec 31, 2005.

Although Microsoft recently announced that it would waive the initial US$30,000 extended support fee for customers with Software Assurance (SA) on Exchange 5.5, the only customers eligible for this benefit are those who purchased the older Upgrade Advantage maintenance license on it and then converted it to SA when Microsoft implemented its Licensing 6.0 program in 2002. So, even though all Exchange 5.5 customers will now get free extended support for the first year, those with SA will get it for the second year also.

Because Exchange 5.5 migration requires upgrading NT 4.0 to Windows 2000 and AD, these customers are also faced with a similar problem with NT 4.0, which is even older than Exchange 5.5 and for which extended support was to end on Dec. 31, 2003. However, in Jan. 2003, Microsoft added 12 months to the extended support period for Windows NT 4.0 Server, pushing out the deadline to Dec. 31, 2004.

Resources

For more information on Exchange life-cycle policies, see www.microsoft.com/exchange/support/lifecycle.

For more on Exchange Server 2003, see the July 2003 Research Report, "Exchange Server 2003, Outlook 2003 Enhance Mobility, Scalability, Security."

For more on how Windows Server 2003 AD changes may affect migration, see the "Active Directory Improvements Remove Many Migration Roadblocks" chapter on page 10 of the Apr. 2003 Research Report, "Improving PC Management with Windows Server 2003."