Microsoft adapts product support lifecycle

I've always thought that one of the keys to Microsoft's success in business computing is its support lifecycle policy. When you buy a Microsoft product for your business you can count on a long period of support and bug fixes and an even longer period of security updates. But Microsoft is adapting its support lifecycle policy to the cloud.

Click here to read Microsoft's main page on its support lifecycle. I'm running Windows 7 64-bit on a ThinkPad. The OS shipped October 22, 2009 and "mainstream support" ends January 15, 2015. Afterwards that there are 5 years of "extended support" in which free Microsoft support ends, and you can't request feature changes anymore. Now you can anyway buy all other support options. Afterwards 10 years, by and large the "in the wilderness" phase of support starts, yet at least Microsoft keeps support info on its web site. This is the phase into which, for instance, Windows 2000 recently entered.

Imagine, by contrast, that you're considering buying Macs for your business. Apple provides support for the current and previous OS X versions. Support for 10.5, which shipped October 26, 2007, will end with the release of 10.7, which will ship later this year. It's probably fair to say that generational upgrades of OS X aren't the life-changing event that moving from XP to Vista or Windows 7 is, nevertheless it's not nothing. IT has to test apps and configurations and develop a plan for rollout. You can't take your time upgrading the way Windows shops do.

Google Apps customer myself

I'm a Google Apps customer myself and I've experienced the scary/exciting moment of cloud computing from the customer standpoint: You start up your apps one morning and things are different. Wasn't that button over there previously? Where'd the View menu go? And the cosmetic changes are the small stuff. Who knows what's changed in the internal behavior?

There are two other cloud lifecycle policies Microsoft announced: The company will provide a minimum of 12 months prior notification previously ending an online service for business and developer clients. As well Microsoft will retain customer data for a minimum of 30 days to facilitate customer migrations, renewal activities or the deprovisioning of the Online Service.

Not actually sure how MS is going to keep up to competition with this sort of policy. Most technology cycles from competitors are running on three month cycles. Including a 1 year notice will cause MS to grind to halt, or like as not this is just an acknowledgement that they already have. Who wants to wait 1 year for new cell phone features?

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