Cost, Risk, Security, Strategy and Timing are Key
Extended support for Windows Server 2003 will no longer be available after July 14, 2015. It’s already out of mainstream support, meaning that contracted support isn’t available now. Any support needed, even for a per-call incident, won’t be available after July. You’re on your own. Any outage will be yours to manage. You have two choices: deal with it now, or kick the can down the road. In this post I’ll give you 5 reasons why you should address this issue now.
- Cost– Common sense tells us that it costs more to buy a new license than to leave the old, depreciated one in place. In spite of this, if your Windows Server 2003 system supports important resources, you’ll certainly want to invest in an upgrade to keep them running. If you think the current cost for Win 2003 is nil, I’d point out that it actually went up over time as free warranty and standard maintenance contracts were replaced by expensive and specialized per-call support. Maybe that’s not important to you, but the free non-security patches stopped in 2010. Those are important. Maybe that model is adequate for non-critical systems now, but even those have the potential to cost you more to fix in the future, if they have any value to you at all. It’s a good time to either retire these systems, or invest now. The future only holds increasing costs to support marginally valued systems, and even more costs to deal with critical systems. Failure of critical systems may burden you with regulatory fines and worse. Even if the failed systems can be restored, they have no support options, and they’ll cost you in business outage besides the repair costs.
One more cost consideration: if you’re prepared to carry a large portfolio of Windows 2003 systems, you likely have Windows 2000 or earlier as well. Such portfolios of Windows systems are like taking a mortgage on your IT. You’ll have to pay it off some day, and to delay only increases your burden.
- Risk - If your business uses a Windows 2003-based system, for whatever valid purpose, remember that its technology that’s now a decade old. As reliable as it has been, it could be subject to failures without further analysis upgrades to make it resistant.
If your business is subject to regulatory or audit rules, Windows Server 2003 will be unlikely to be compliant after July 2014, as I noted above.
If you’re running old software, you’re likely running old hardware too. That puts you at risk for physical outages (and costs) as the equipment ages.
Consider the applications running on Windows Server 2003. A vendor- or self-built application will likely rely on tools and software that are no longer available. Forced upgrades can be painful, and they’re never more painful than during a major outage that requires rebuild as a solution of last resort (think of a data center destroyed, etc).
But the greatest risk deserves a category of its own: security …
- Security - No security patches ever again; even the most serious incidents and viruses will go unrepaired on WS 2003 (as is the case with earlier versions). So as the hackers and disruptors of the Internet rejoice, your Windows 2003 systems are increasingly vulnerable to whatever they can devise…without a response to an attack. Needless to say, that puts your system and data at risk, but it also potentially act as a gateway to corrupt other systems on your network. It may be wise to segregate systems at risk in a separate network protected by an extra firewall ($$), if you insist on using them. But that’s a bandage approach, not a solution.
- Strategy and capabilities - Windows 2003 is old technology. If you continue to use it, you’re giving up strategic capabilities to leverage cloud strategies and managed services, and you’ll lack the capabilities available in Windows Server 2008 and beyond. If you desire to reduce your costs by virtualization with HyperV, for example, that capability is off the table with Windows 2003 (it was introduced with 2008). Advanced management tools won’t support Windows 2003. Application and hardware upgrades will withdraw support for 2003. As an HP consultant to dozens of large corporations, I see a high percentage of their IT portfolios still depending on WS2003 and earlier versions. I haven’t seen an instance this past year where Windows 2003 end-of-support didn’t affect an organization’s future strategy. It affects the refresh of old hardware (the application and OS software need to be addressed). It affects cloud strategy (I challenge you to find a viable cloud vendor supporting Windows Server 2003 after next year), regulatory audits, consolidation strategy, data center migrations (do you migrate Windows 2003 before or after moving it?). And it forces IT to spend more time and money on supporting obsolete systems.
- Timing – Maybe you’re convinced that it’s a good idea to upgrade, but you’re wondering: how long will it take to fix this? For many systems, it could be as simple as a weekend upgrade of the operating system. For others, it could take months to replace, test and deploy key components. As of this writing, you still have months to go before WS 2003 support is withdrawn. For many businesses, this is also a time for planning and budgeting. With all these factors converging, the timing to address remediation of Windows Server 2003 is now.
It’s easy to kick the can down the road, but for this issue, it’s costly, risky, unsafe, untimely — and generally unwise.
HP can help you evaluate your strategy, and migrate your Windows 2003 (or older) systems to an appropriate platform. You can read more about HP Technology Services for Microsoft migrations here.
A great place to meet our migration experts and learn more is HP Discover 2014, coming up December 2-4 in Barcelona. For example, Robert Reynolds will be presenting a session titled Modernize your Windows environment now: Best practices for migrating from Windows 2003.
