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Microsoft Extends Product Lifecycle
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has decided to extend product support on business and developer products effective June 1, 2004. Mainstream support remains unchanged at 5 years, extended support is greatly extended from 2 to 5 years and Online self-help support is extended from 8 to 10 years. I have to say kudos to Microsoft on this one."
Microsoft is slowly shifting its business toward "support" since software will inevitably become free.
The thing you have to remember about Microsoft is that it, like almost any large company, is not monolithic. It is made up of a number of fiefdoms, some of which compete for the same resources (customers, money, prestige, etc) and are therefore at war with one another, the terms of which are defined by what is possible when both are part of a larger whole. This is why things like .NET made it to market. It was sold to the marketing department, the OS department, the Office development department, and the developer tools department (visual studio) with each one seeing it as something different.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
They seem to have the shortest product lifecycles i've ever seen.
.. :)
OTOH i'd have thought that it'd be in microsoft's interests to force people to upgrade by withdrawing support from win98 etc...
Maybe they really are scared
It's too bad RedHat won't do something similar. They have pitifully short product lifecycles.
god... I guess if you insist.
however, I **personally** wouldn't want to run win98 for another 4minutes let alone 4 years.
windows XP really does kick win9x's ass fairly hard in almost every regard I can think of... for that matter win2k kicks win9x's ass also.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
Having online support on office tools for 10 years seems pretty good to me, but for developer tools it should be even longer.
Ever had to muck around in a 10 year old project (someone elses at that), where the tools used to build it have been deemed obsolete for 5 years? Not fun.
This sounds more like a make-news project than anything, didn't they just drop all their support options.. some of the ones they're fixing now? Sounds more like this was planned all along and is being used to garner pro-MS support.
"Hey, did you hear.. Microsoft just upped all their support options, our windows computers are covered for another couple years.."
*sigh*.. a wise decision to keep support, even though it probably was planned marketing decision from the start.
The vast majority of the companies I speak to regarding migrating away from MS are primarily driven to do so because of cost and dropped support from MS. The sinbgle biggest driver for a lot of the desktop migrations is dropped support for NT, for example. Linux is scaring them shitless, and this is their reaction. The great thing is, they are reacting rather then being pro-active. MS seems to be on the back-foot for now.
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
"Kudos for Microsoft"? From an anonymous reader? Who just happened to mention all those figures in the same sentence? Does this anonymous reader work for Microsoft? Am I paranoid?
If you force customers to upgrade too quick, you risk loosing customers. If you let them have the same shit forever, you don't make money. I mean, as you pointed out with Rhat, it is just an insanely short support cycle. They got knocked out of the running for our offical supported Linux for that reason. We don't want to have to upgrade every year. Money isn't the real issue, we have no problem with yearly support contracts, it's the idea that we need to move to a new OS version every singe year.
The length of support is the reason that you don't see much shit over the 2k/XP thing. I mean if people were forced to upgrade to a new OS to the tune of $100-$300 (depending on the deal you get) after one year, we'd all be pissed. However 2k is still supported, and will remain so for a few more years. So we get XP on new systems, and keep 2k on existing systems.
Now personally, I think they are extending it a bit too long. After 5-6 years, you need to be thinking about moving to a new OS, for desktops at least and even for servers. I mean commodity hardware just isn't all that reliable at that amount of time. Try getting a Dell warantee for 6+ years. Big iron is different, you buy a mainframe, it better last 20 years, but little x86 desktops and servers really need to be looking at being EOL'd after 6 years max, and the OS likewise.
But, I'll take it. I'd rather have longer support than shorter support.
I can think of a couple right off the bat:
* XP doesn't hang when shutting down (at least in my experience)
* Multi-user profiles
* Built-in USB 2.0 support (SP1?)
* System Restore (buggy though it can be, it's better than nothing.)
* MMC
I'm no fan of XP, but the issues and capabilities listed above make supporting XP (and 2000) a lot easier for us than 98 was.
The whole point of Office is to be more than just four different applications that come in the same box. That's why it has been so successful.
You can bypass the Linux logon screen by booting from a boot disk with Ext2FS (or ReiserFS, depending on the system) read/write support and replacing the login binary file (/bin/login) with the executable of your choice, such as /bin/sh. Restart and wait a few minutes for the "login prompt".
I think it is a message to corporations; slow to upgrade, fearful of lack of support because of it. This solidifies that.
Call me a cynic if you want (hell, I am a cynic) but no big company does anything simply for the good of its customers. Extended support does benefit MS customers, I don't debate that and I'm sure they'll be happy about this turn of events.
There must be a reason that prompted Microsoft to do this though. They don't really need to lure new people into the contracts, therefore the only reason can be to stop people leaving the contracts. Why would people not renew the contracts? Maybe because the next upgrade is many years away and they could get a better deal from $linuxsupportcompany.
This is a positive action from MS, but it would be shortsighted to say that the reason is not fear of other products making inroads while companies wait for longhorn.
"Kudos to Microsoft on this one" - what are you talking about? This has nothing to do with kudos, it is a business decision pure and simple. The delay in a large number of software products has meant that Microsoft's existing support times are leaving large gaps for millions of customers to walk through.
But, bigger than that, its Software Assurance programme - which it has stated it intends to make an increasing proportion of its revenue from - looked set to collapse unless it extended support because hundreds of thousands of them are up for renewal in July and many customers have been complaining they spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and have received absolutely nothing in return (read the IT press for details).
The support extension is because of product delays. It is nothing but a business decision to protect its market, especially when open-source alternatives are becoming more popular.
Do you honestly think Microsoft would make this decision just because it reckons it would be nicer and fairer?
No kudos at all. Simple business.