10 days to go: Microsoft Windows Server 2003 on the verge of extinction

July 04, 2015 17:12
10 days to go: Microsoft Windows Server 2003 on the verge of extinction

Can a 11-year old mobile compete with the latest smartphone? It cannot. Simply because it cannot perform all the tasks, which a latest smartphone can do.

Will you use an old elevator, which doesn’t have any support or maintenance? Just because it is functioning. I am sure, you don’t.

Same is the case when it comes to a software. The damage at times would cost the company.

There is an estimated 23.8 million instances of Windows Server 2003 running across 11.9 million physical servers worldwide. The numbers are absolutely astounding, but now that Microsoft has announced that it is going to stop providing support for the former version and it is only 10 days to go for its extinction, it’s high time for businesses and CIOs to look either for the migration or for a better alternative.

According to Spice works, a global professional network of more than 5 million IT Professionals, 64.5% of organizations who use its tools in Asia Pacific are still running at least one instance of Windows Server 2003 as of June 2014. Now, it’s better to see it as an opportunity to make changes to align to a mobile-first, cloud-first world? Many CIOs won’t refuse funding to modernize infrastructure.



Because risks involved with running a server software application that is no longer supported include: increased exposure to software failure - Microsoft will stop supporting new software add-ons making updating applications a potentially dangerous gamble; heightened security risks - new security flaws will no longer be patched; and finally one runs the chance of falling out of the compliance good books. For example, according to the credit card industry’s PCI Security Council standards, if an unsupported operating system is Internet-facing, it will be logged as an automatic compliance failure. Additionally, should being compliant with standards such as the PCI Data Security standard and the health industry’s HIPAA not be an issue within the organization, it may still result in the company being cut off from partners seeking to preserve their own compliant status.

Also the impact would be on a greater scale than that of Windows XP’s end of support, which was just a desktop operating system.

- Manohar

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Tagged Under :
Windows Server 2003  Microsoft  Windows XP