Support Life Cycle Extended

Recognizing that new product versions are taking longer to release and deploy, Microsoft has extended its support life-cycle guidelines. They ensure a minimum two-year support overlap between a product and its successor, longer support periods for major service packs, and an additional three years of fee-based software updates and other support for most business products. The changes give customers more time to evaluate and deploy updates or new releases, and may resolve some immediate life-cycle issues for major products such as SQL Server 2000 and Windows XP.

Announced in late May 2004, the most recent changes mean critical security updates and custom hotfixes, as well as Premier support and other fee-based product support options, will now be provided for at least 10 years, rather than the current seven years. Furthermore, all products will receive free support (as per warrantee) for at least two years after the successor product ships. The changes affect most current products but do not affect most older products, such as Windows 98 or Office 97, that are past or near their original support end-of-life dates. The changes do not affect the types of service that Microsoft offers through Product Support Services, but only the time during which some of those services will be available.