Microsoft Announces Product Support Policy

In a `better late than never' announcement, Microsoft has published product support policies. The long overdue policies are to establish guidelines `as to how long customers can expect Microsoft to support its products after release.' For the most part, this new policy lengthens Microsoft's support terms for all products.

Microsoft's previous support policy only required Microsoft to provide its customers with six months' prior notice before discontinuing all support for that product, which often caused havoc with corporate customer budgets and planning product life cycles and version upgrades of Microsoft products. These published policies should also prevent customers of Microsoft from incorporating a new Microsoft technology, only to discover six months later that the product is being discontinued, with the company being left in the lurch with an obsolete and unsupported product.

Under its new policy, Microsoft will offer a 5-year support policy for its' business and software development products, with extended support available for two additional years for an extended support fee. 5-year support will also apply for Microsoft's consumer products and multimedia software. Additionally, Microsoft will offer online Web-based, self-help support for all of its products for at least 8 years. According to one of Microsoft's Product Support Services division's directors, Andy Erlandson, "Our old school of thought was to make our support life cycles based on versions, but it became clear that didn't work with many of our customers. So, one of the big changes we made was to move to dates....We really wanted to give customers information when they were buying our products or making deploying decisions (about) just how long support would be available to them." Sounds like a good idea, Andy!

This rather hastily announced support policy appears to have been issued to solve some of the ire and backlash Microsoft received from its customers after Microsoft announced its bungled Software 6 "Assurance Licensing Plan." Under the Assurance Licensing Plan, Microsoft advised its customers in May 2002 that they were required to sign up for and pay in advance to Microsoft by August, 2002 an annual licensing fee for 1, 2 or 3 years for the `privilege' of being able to buy application upgrades and operating system upgrades at a fixed cost, rather than purchasing these when the customer needed them. If the customer declined to sign up for the Assurance Licensing Plan, they were told they would lose any discounts previously given them and would be forced to pay the full price for the upgrade. In some cases, the full upgrade would cost more than paying for an current copy of the product outside of the Assurance Licensing Plan. Microsoft has acknowledged that it didn't do an effective job of communicating this new `software assurance' licensing plan, under which software would be licensed at rates that were estimated to increase astronomically, from 33% to 107%. Chief Executive Steve Ballmer admitted that Microsoft's mismanagement of the licensing plan didn't allow customers sufficient transition time from the old program, which alienated many long-time customers and contributed to customers rejecting Microsoft's products en masse. And, although the new licensing plan was to go into effect on October 1st, independent sources estimate that nearly 2/3 of Microsoft's customers refused to sign up for the new licensing plan, complaining that they felt "strong armed" into signing up for a blanket maintenance contract for upgrades and software that they did not want and/or did not need. As part of the Assurance Plan debacle, Microsoft claims that it also `discovered that companies were using products well past the period that Microsoft had planned to support these products.' For example, Microsoft had planned to end Windows 2000 mainstream support in March 2003. Yet, the majority of businesses have scheduled migration and roll out of Windows 2000 in late 2002, and nearly 50% of preconfigured PCs sold to businesses in 2002 already have Windows 2000 installed as the operating system. And Microsoft planned to end support within the first quarter of 2003?

Under the revised plan, Microsoft will continue mainstream support for Windows 2000 through March 2005, and will offer extended support options through March 2007. However, Microsoft is discontinuing or has already discontinued support for many of its other "older" products that are still widely used today in businesses. Standard support for Office 97 was discontinued on August 31, 2001, and the extended period ended on February 28, 2002. Microsoft will offer Office XP mainstream support through June 2006, and extended support through June, 2008. Consumer and business user products have also been divided into different groups: all normal Windows XP Home support will terminate on Dec. 31, 2006, while Windows XP Professional will be available for two additional years through an extended support option.

Another element of Microsoft's mainstream support period is the release of bug fixes to correct product errors, which businesses are heavily reliant upon. Microsoft will offer "security fixes" for up to 7 years from the time a business product is released, or only through the available extended support period. "Fixes" for Windows NT 4 Server were previously only `free' through December 31st of this year, but Microsoft has extended these through December 2003, even though Microsoft discontinued the Windows NT 4 server product in 1998. And, Microsoft says that it will not offer Windows 95 "hot fixes" at all, since this product was discontinued in December 2000.

Confused by all of this? We are. Sounds like Microsoft is at it again.