Microsoft recently announced the end of service (EOS) for Windows 2003, slated to be fully unsupported by July 15, 2015. The clock is now ticking.
This is the highlighted news of the week for most IT enterprises. Windows server 2003 has crossed a decade in serving IT industry and the game of IT is changing at a rapid pace. More enterprise based applications are transitioning to work on cloud environments for improved data consistency and the promise to enhance business continuity. These applications are designed to take advantage of 64 bit architectures.
Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
-John F. Kennedy
Why not Windows 2003 Server and why 2012 R2?
The answer is simple. Windows 2003 has antiquated application support for 16 and 32 bit applications, which are becoming less relevant as time goes on. Also, the security model of Windows 2003 is outdated whereas Windows 2012 R2 has Dynamic Access Control (DAC) which promises a centralized security model for network resources accessing sensitive data. Microsoft Azure (a cloud service from Windows) provides services to deploy your applications over the cloud, to run on Windows 2012 R2 servers. They also started providing trial run for Windows R2 on Azure.
Above all, PCI and HIPAA compliances do not allow enterprises to use unsupported operating systems because they are increasingly liable to security threats and attacks.
What makes migration a difficult task?
In general, cost and time consumption are the biggest hurdles for migration. Migrating to Windows 2008 is not a choice an enterprise would prefer because sooner or later they would have to perform another migration to Windows 2012 R2. Though upgrading servers gives a lot advantages like improving performance of processes and enabling services support for advanced technologies, the cost of the upgrade is notably high for small businesses and enterprises.
Sources suggest that Microsoft estimates a server migration will take at least 200 days and application migration may take more than 300 days to complete, which leaves less time available in hand. There will be possibly an extension on EOS, though sources are not confirmed. Still, starting migrations as soon as possible is a smart choice to make.
The solution:
In your business continuity plan, you should be aware that you are going to have to evolve some of your technologies in order to stay competitive and keep your data secure. As the below quote suggests:
The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.
-Peter Drucker
Since Microsoft has slated the EOS for Windows 2003 in July of 2015, they have given enough time for you to begin migrating your services to 2012 R2, assuming you start your migration soon. Microsoft has also provided steps for migration, which I highly recommend you read before you start your migration.
There are talks among SMBs for migrating their Windows 2003 servers into cloud services like Amazon AWS because some instances can get servers up in minutes. Also, there are services like Office 365 which are hosted centrally over the cloud – offered by Azure. As SMBs start upgrading their systems, they will have the opportunity to move into SaaS as their business model.
The countdown is ON for the destruction of support for Microsoft Windows 2003. How does this affect you and what choices will you make?
