The Role of Life Cycle in Deployment Decisions

In determining the risk of continuing to run on an aging product, it is necessary to remember that Microsoft’s life-cycle phases are guidelines rather than rules, and the benefits available during different phases are totally at the discretion of Microsoft. This has important implications for how and when customers migrate off aging products, such as Windows XP.

Benefits Determined by Microsoft

When a product is covered by Mainstream support, the guidelines say that customers can get incident support (no-charge incident support, paid incident support, support charged on an hourly basis, and support for warranty claims), security update support, and the ability to request nonsecurity hotfixes (for a bug reported during an incident). Note that being in Mainstream support does not guarantee that fixes will be made or widely distributed. It also does not mean that fixes will be rolled up into an integrated bug fix rollup or service pack. Finally, it does not mean that other products also in Mainstream support will be updated to work with a new version of a dependent product.