By Paul DeGroot [bio]
Posted: Apr. 11, 2005

• Chart: Life Cycle by Product Category
• Chart: Product Life-Cycle Phases and Options
• Chart: Important Upcoming Product Support Dates

The following is the full text of an article published by Directions on Microsoft, an independent research firm focused exclusively on Microsoft strategy & technology. Each month we make one or more key articles available to non-subscribers.

New support options have been added to Microsoft's product life cycle for business software, and previous arrangements for getting bug fixes late in a product's life have been codified, formalized, and extended. These modifications to the product life cycle, announced in Mar. 2005, give legacy products, such as Windows NT 4.0 and Exchange 5.5, the same 10 years of assisted support as newer products. However, the price for such support will rise each year, thus encouraging customers to upgrade rather than continue to use products long after Microsoft wants to support them.

The changes formalize the process and fee schedule for companies that want to continue to get bug fixes during the Extended support phase, during which nonsecurity fixes are available only for a fee. Microsoft has also released additional details about fee-based assisted-support options (contrasted with free, self-help support, available from Microsoft's Web site, for example) called Custom support, for products that are at the end of the regular life cycle.

During March, Microsoft also lengthened the support period for Microsoft Business Solutions products and clarified what kind of support customers with Software Assurance (SA) on their Microsoft software can get during the Extended support phase, how the company calculates support dates, and support rules for some 64-bit systems.

Changing Support Requirements

The latest support life cycle changes reflect how maturation of the IT market and Microsoft's product lines have led many customers to use software far longer than Microsoft intended. Microsoft issues upgrades for mature products less frequently than in the past: some products that were upgraded every two or three years in the 1990s are now on five- or six-year upgrade cycles. In addition, many Microsoft products have reached a plateau of functionality beyond which many customers are not inclined to quickly upgrade. Microsoft's SA program, the only way for businesses to upgrade software through volume licensing, creates an additional incentive to stand pat: companies can save money on software licensing costs by not purchasing SA, which adds 25% to 29% to software license costs each year. Customers can often realize a net savings on licensing costs if they use their current Microsoft product for four years or longer.

Until 2002, products changed so rapidly and significantly that most of the installed base upgraded within a few years, and demand for extensive support of older products was low. As a result, rules varied by product group, and Microsoft offered customers little guidance about how long they could expect support for older products. The approach employed by some Microsoft product groups—products were supported until two successor versions were released—satisfied most customers.

(To see current life cycles for various Microsoft product categories, see the chart "Life Cycle by Product Category".)

In 2002, Microsoft brought some consistency to product life cycles by defining a Mainstream phase, during which service packs and bug fixes are free to all customers, followed by an Extended phase, during which service packs are no longer offered and customers must pay extra for bug fixes (although security fixes continue to be free). In addition, customers can help themselves to whatever information and downloads Microsoft posts on its Web site, a support service known as Online Self-Help.

Initially, the Mainstream phase ran five years, and Extended two years. Online Self-Help lasted from the time the product was released until several years after the Extended phase ended, providing customers with eight to ten years of unassisted help.

In 2004, Microsoft increased the Extended phase to five years, and added a rule that the Mainstream phase always lasts for two years after the successor version was released. This latter rule eliminates the potential embarrassment of having a popular program drop off Mainstream support before the release of its successor. For instance, the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, is currently planned for release in 2006—five years after Windows XP was released. Under a strict five-year rule, Windows XP could drop off Mainstream support before Microsoft had an upgrade to replace it or before most customers had an opportunity to upgrade to a version in Mainstream support.

New Support Agreements

These changes were not sufficient to corral all possibilities, however. The new rules were typically applied only to products currently in Mainstream support, while older products were often left on older (and shorter) life cycles. However, customers kept using products such as Windows 98 or Windows NT 4.0 and demanding support for them, so Microsoft kept adding years to their life cycles on an ad hoc basis. This resolved the immediate problem but created even greater uncertainty about product life cycles: it appeared as though a product's life cycle could be extended annually if enough customers complained.

The most recent changes aim to provide greater predictability and a well-defined set of rules for the kind of support customers can get, and for how long they can get it, on older products. (For an overview of life-cycle phases, see the chart "Product Life-Cycle Phases and Options".)

Extended Hotfix Support Agreement

The Extended Hotfix Support Agreement (EHSA) is not entirely new, but it is little known, and Microsoft is now talking about the program more openly to make sure that customers are aware of it. It provides bug fixes on older products once they have left Mainstream support and are in Extended support. Rules for this service include the following:

• Customers must have an existing support agreement—Premier, Essential, Microsoft Services Partner Advantage, or Software Assurance coverage for a server product—before they can obtain an EHSA
• An EHSA covers only certain Microsoft products
• Customers must sign an EHSA within 90 days of the time that a specified product leaves the Mainstream support phase, unless they have a server product covered by SA, which waives the 90-day rule.

The cost of an EHSA rises each year during the Extended support phase, giving customers an incentive to upgrade to a later version still in Mainstream support. The cost varies depending on customer requirements, and customers are advised to contact their Microsoft technical account manager (TAM) for pricing information. One nonsecurity bug fix is included in the annual price.

Products currently eligible for an EHSA include Exchange 5.5 and Visual Basic 6.0 (a change that has angered some Visual Basic 6.0 users, who want Microsoft to provide Mainstream support longer while they make the transition to Visual Basic .NET). Windows 2000 will be eligible for EHSAs starting in July 2005.

Customers need to obtain only one EHSA for multiple products, but must sign additional documents for each additional product they want to cover under their EHSA.

Custom Support Agreement

Like the EHSA, a Custom Support Agreement (CSA) is not entirely new, but the visibility of custom support has risen since Windows NT 4.0 left Extended support. Some large Microsoft customers kept using NT 4.0, and wanted Microsoft to support it. Initially announced in mid-2004, when Windows NT 4.0 Workstation left Extended support, the CSA provided only hotfixes for critical security vulnerabilities. With Windows NT 4.0 Server now out of Extended support (as of Dec. 31, 2004), Microsoft will also provide CSA customers with "important" security hotfixes, nonsecurity hotfixes, workarounds, and migration advice.

Customers are not required to purchase a CSA immediately when a product leaves Extended support, but if they purchase it later they are required to pay annual fees back to the date that Extended support ended. Microsoft will then provide them with any bug fixes or other updates that were released previously. As with EHSAs, the price for each CSA has not been announced, but will rise each year by an unspecified amount, and customers will need a Premier or Essential Support agreement.

The only product currently covered by a CSA is Windows NT 4.0, but Exchange 5.5 will be added to the list when it leaves Extended support at the start of 2006. CSAs are also available for some embedded products, such as Windows CE 3.0 and Windows NT Embedded.

Customers can purchase CSAs from Microsoft or through a select group of partners.

Microsoft has not specified a termination date for CSAs, but the company's current roadmap offers CSAs on Windows NT 4.0 until the end of 2006 and on Exchange 5.5 until the end of 2007. In effect, that roadmap gives each of these products 10 years of assisted support, bringing them into line with the 10 years of Mainstream plus Extended support available for current business and developer products.

Microsoft does not anticipate continuing or extending the CSA program much beyond 2007. The company says that only a small fraction of its customers currently have EHSA- or CSA-style agreements, and the 10 years of assisted support offered for current products through the Mainstream and Extended phases should meet customers' support requirements in the future.

Other Support Announcements

In discussing its new support arrangements, the company clarified the rules for other support offerings, including the following:

MBS Mainstream support lengthened. Support for Microsoft Business Solutions products, such as Great Plains, previously lasted for only three years. Microsoft has extended that to five years of Mainstream support. Extended support is not offered for MBS products.

Expiration of SA incident support. Incident support offered for server products covered by SA terminates when the product leaves the Mainstream support phase. Customers who have SA on a product own the right to upgrade to the product's latest version, so the obvious course of action for companies that want to use a product that enjoys the widest range of support options is to upgrade. An alternative is to continue to use an older product without free support. After five years of Mainstream support, such products will generally have few remaining obvious bugs. If the customer does not want to upgrade but wants incident support, they must have a separate support contract.

Customers who could be affected by this rule include those with SA on Windows 2000 Server, which leaves Mainstream support in June 2005, and SQL Server 7 and Exchange 2000, both of which leave Extended support at the end of 2005. (For a more complete list of products that are due to enter a new support phase in the next year, see the chart "Important Upcoming Product Support Dates".)

Support date calculations. The date on which support phases are based is technically the date of a product's general availability, but Microsoft modifies the support end dates to fall at the end of a quarter, rather than on a specific date. According to Glenn Pereira, group manager for new offerings with Microsoft's Worldwide Premier and Support Services group, general availability will henceforth be determined as the date that a product was released to manufacturing, plus 90 days, rounded off to the nearest quarterly boundary. For example, Exchange 5.5 was released to manufacturing on Nov. 5, 1997, so its official general availability date for the purposes of support is Dec. 31, 1997.

Synchronized edition dates. Microsoft will normally synchronize all editions of a product to the same support dates, even if they were released at slightly different times. For example, Windows 2000 Server Datacenter Edition was released six months after Windows 2000 Server Standard Edition, but the two products follow the same life-cycle dates.

Pereira says the company also wants to apply the same policy to 64-bit editions of products: the 64-bit edition will have the same dates as the 32-bit edition. That means that the Extended 64-Bit Edition of Windows XP, due to be released in Apr. 2005, will likely be in Mainstream support for less than five years—current roadmaps call for Windows XP to leave Mainstream support in 2008.

Some of these synchronization problems might be fixed by better development schedules that see various editions of a product released closer together. In addition, future OS versions are likely to emerge simultaneously in 32-bit and 64-bit editions.

Resources

The starting point for information about product support life cycles is support.microsoft.com.

SA is described in detail in the Dec. 2003 Research Report, "Understanding Microsoft Licensing."

Microsoft's security bulletin rating system, which defines critical and important updates, is described on page 19 of the Apr. 2004 Research Report, "Trustworthy Computing: Making Software More Secure."