2025 Support Meteor Leads to Software Mass Extinction

• A series of on-premises software retirements and end-of-support dates will converge in 2025 and 2026, leaving many common deployments unsupported.
• Options for running Microsoft software on-premises will become increasingly restrictive as the company’s focus is cloud-first subscriptions.
• Organizations should plan for upgrades now to minimize disruption in 2025 and be ready to transition to subscription-based software and services.

Several versions of perpetually licensed (single-purchase) on-premises software—including Windows client and server, Office client, and servers—will leave Extended support by 2026, most in 2025. Customers running these offerings will be compelled to choose between running the unsupported software or transitioning to subscription-based software and services. This could affect the supportability of other software, and in some cases compel upgrades of additional products before they too leave support.

The coordination of support end dates and future incompatibilities represents a strategy of discontinuing perpetually licensed products in favor of subscription-based offerings that will be increasingly difficult to avoid. Customers can think of the 2025 cutoff date as a meteor that will cause a widespread extinction of perpetually licensed on-premises software.