Microsoft Ending Support

Today marks the end of the road for 2 old friends at Microsoft, Windows Vista and Exchange 2007.  Both have reached end of support with Microsoft and you should be off of them long before now.

For those of you that may be unaware, Microsoft defines “end of support” as: End of support refers to the date when Microsoft no longer provides automatic fixes, updates, or online technical assistance. This is the time to make sure you have the latest available update or service pack installed. Without Microsoft support, you will no longer receive security updates that can help protect your PC from harmful viruses, spyware, and other malicious software that can steal your personal information. For more information go to Microsoft Support Lifecycle.

Vista, Microsoft’s follow-up to Windows XP, never really gained much market share and its various (odd) graphical user interface changes left many users confused.  This of course then pushed Microsoft to create Windows 7 which many felt was the real follow-up to Windows XP.  At this point, moving to Windows 10 is a must and ironically Microsoft is releasing a Windows 10 update today.  You can find the link to this release here:  https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows/whats-new/whats-new-windows-10-version-1703

As for Exchange 2007, it was the first time many admins had seen PowerShell in a Microsoft application.  We were told at the time that we better learn PowerShell because Microsoft was going to take away the GUI.  We know that never really happened but PowerShell has become an essential tool.  Exchange 2007 was a good product but like Vista is was quickly overshadowed by Exchange 2010 which saw extremely high adoption rates and it still in use in many enterprise organizations believe it or not.  At this point, it is unclear if we are going to see too many on-premises versions of Exchange Server.  The massive rise of Office365 adoption is a clear winner for Microsoft from both a support and revenue perspective.

(Whenever the topic of PowerShell comes up I always recommend Jeffrey Snover’s Microsoft Virtual Academy Jumpstart course found here: https://mva.microsoft.com/en-us/training-courses/getting-started-with-microsoft-powershell-8276?l=r54IrOWy_2304984382.  Jeffrey is the creator of PowerShell and his training is easy to follow.)