Another day, another end-of-support announcement for a product: On July 14, 2015, Windows Server 2003 (WS2003) goes out of support.
Poof! Over. That’s the bad news.
What’s the upside? Well, there isn’t really an upside, but you should rest assured that it won’t stop working. Systems won’t crash, and software won’t stop running.
From the standpoint of security, however, the implications are rather more dramatic.
For starters, this automatically means that anyone running WS2003 will be noncompliant with PCI security standards. So if your business falls under these restrictions – and if your business accepts any credit cards, it certainly does – the clock is ticking. Loudly.
There’ll be no more security patches, no more technical support and no more software or content updates after July 14, 2015. Most importantly, this information is public. Hackers typically target systems they know to be out of support. The only solution, really, is to upgrade Windows Server 2003 today.
TxMQ consultants report that a large percentage of our customers’ systems are running on Windows Server, and some percentage of our customers are still on WS2003. There are no terms strong enough terms to reinforce the need to get in touch with TxMQ, or your support vendor, for an immediate plan to upgrade Windows Server 2003 and affected systems.
Server migrations oftentimes take up to 90 days, while applications can take up to 2 months. Frankly, any business running WS2003 doesn’t have 60 days to upgrade, let alone 90. So please make a plan today for your migration/upgrade.