Intellity Tech News

from the social media team, 04.01.2023/XNUMX/XNUMX

Because the development of good software is not just a one-off effort, but requires ongoing maintenance, care, further development and adaptation, software products must also come to an end of their life cycle. This frees up development work for new products and solutions stay up to date. This is also the case at Microsoft, which is why we have to expect the end of the life cycle of various products again this year and have to take this into account for projects.

Microsoft currently uses two different Lifecycle Policy strategies, called the "Fixed Lifecycle Policy" and the "Modern Lifecycle Policy".

Most experienced technicians will already die from the past Fixed policy know where Microsoft works in 10-year cycles. The first 5 years of a server release was known as "mainstream" support, where all new feature updates were provided and full compatibility was guaranteed. After that, products were in the so-called "extended" support, where there were all security updates but no more new features.

If a product leaves this life cycle, the software is no longer maintained and there are neither new feature updates nor security updates against new vulnerabilities. By then at the latest, companies should consider replacing the product or upgrading to a newer version in support.

The second strategy that modern policy, is aimed at software solutions that are continuously being developed, so that no fixed end of life is planned. This policy is mainly used for cloud solutions, where rapid further development is more important than fixed versions.

The following products from the modern policy Development line will be completely discontinued in 2023 and will no longer be developed or provided by Microsoft. Continued operation with an old version is no longer possible here either.

Anyone who uses the Messenger Kaizala should switch to another solution such as Teams as soon as possible. Azure infrastructure administrators should also no longer provide Azure VMs with the Classic Profile.

Other products can continue to be used despite the end of their life cycle, albeit with the great risk that security gaps and incompatibility in the software can cause widespread disruption.

Companies should plan the upgrade to the latest solution version at an early stage and, if necessary, purchase new licenses before operations are jeopardized.

The Fixed policy the end of the life cycle is usually associated with larger projects, since entire server versions have to be exchanged and migrated. According to the fixed end of a product release, this list is longer and companies should budget for the replacement.

This is what really stands out on this list End of life of Windows Server 2012 as well as des Exchange Server 2013 in the eye. Also the end of Hyper V Server 2012 and from Office 2013 should be known to all companies!

The last block of lifecycle changes concerns the transition from mainstream to extended support, where Microsoft will no longer provide new features. Extended Support is also considered to have limited support in hybrid deployments with Microsoft 365, so organizations should only use mainstream support software.

A review of the company policy makes sense for the following software versions in order to keep your finger on the pulse of the modern world.