Windows XP to Exit Extended Support

On Apr. 8, 2014, Windows XP, Office 2003, and several other products still deployed in many organizations will leave Extended support. Future security vulnerabilities discovered in these product versions will likely remain unpatched, and other forms of product support from Microsoft will be limited. Customers who have not yet begun planning and executing migrations away from these versions should do so in order to minimize the potential of vulnerabilities to their IT infrastructure.

The Microsoft Support Life Cycle

In determining the risk of continuing to run on an aging version of a product, a key consideration is what product support Microsoft will provide in the form of software updates and services such as incident response. These are defined by a set of product support life-cycle phases based on the age of a version of a product. Microsoft’s life-cycle phases are guidelines rather than rules, and the benefits available during different phases are at the discretion of Microsoft. Life cycles for consumer versions usually differ substantially from the life cycles for enterprise or business products.