Mainstream support for Windows Server 2003 ended on July 13, 2010 and now, right around the corner extended support ends on July 14, 2015. This means no more updates as well as loss of compliance. For customers considering maintaining legacy servers the cost of intrusion detection and advanced firewalls to isolate the unsupported platform will only result in more cost for a platform that will no longer pass compliance audits. Definitely not the way to go!
Now is the time for you to contact your customers with Windows Server 2003 in order to guide them down the path to IT innovation. There will be much planning required in order to avoid as much disruption to your customer’s business as possible.
To assist our partners in this effort Microsoft has developed migration planning assistance to include a four step process to analyze workloads and provide recommendations. This four step process covers Discovery, Assessment, Targeting and Migration. You can take advantage of the Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) toolkit to inventory your customer’s environment and workloads. There are many things to consider to include Windows server roles, LOB applications, classification of data to be migrated, current and future end user requirements, etc. The process will help you determine whether you migrate to a new server platform on premises or move directly to Azure. Either way we have you covered.
Get the conversation started and take advantage of the many resources available to you via your MPN portal as well as via Windows Server 2003 EOL.
Kathleen Molosky