Microsoft Standardizes Product SupportMicrosoft Standardizes Product Support

Microsoft is standardizing the support life cycle for its products, ending a hodgepodge of policies that left customers confused about how long support would continue.

In a nutshell, the new policy is that most enterprise products will be supported for a minimum of five years after their general availability date. Enterprise customers will have the option of buying an additional two years of extended support, at minimum.

The policy is geared toward current versions of products, such as Windows 2000 and Windows XP, and future versions.

Microsoft has posted a Product Support Lifecycle page to provide details on support, including FAQs at the bottom of the page detailing support for specific products.

Reed Wilson, an IS manager for oil trader Petro-Diamond Inc., says the new policies will make supporting Microsoft products simpler.

"It makes things more predictable," Wilson says. "Other companies have already done this. It's well past time Microsoft got on the bandwagon." Previously, it was difficult to predict when Microsoft product support would end. "It's certainly not unusual with other companies to be able to go to a Web site and find out whether a product is still supported, for how long, and at what level of support," Wilson says.

The basic five-year support that comes with products is called "mainstream support." That actually varies from product to product and is based on the specific licensing agreement a customer has with Microsoft.

For instance, some customers' licenses cover three support incidents, while others are charged on a per-incident basis.

Additionally, customers can sign up for two-year extended support after the mainstream period ends. This covers questions and answers but not hot fixes that don't apply to security. The company will continue to provide security hot fixes.

Before this policy, Microsoft had a support policy for most of its products sometimes referred to as "N-2": When Microsoft shipped a new version of a product, the existing version continued to be supported but the version before that was dropped from support. For instance, when Office 2000 shipped, Office 97 continued to be supported but Office 95 support ended.