In case you haven’t heard and you are running Windows Server 2003, formal support will end this month, in 2 weeks time.

What does this mean?

When a product’s support expires it means there will no more patches or security updates and so as time passes, your business’s security risk will increase. If compliance is a business critical issue, then this will also become a problem as your IT system will be seen as vulnerable. If you are processing credit card or other sensitive transactions, then this will be a severe problem for you.

There are upwards of 10 million WS2003 machines still in operation according to industry experts, so this will impact on many businesses in the UK and around the world.

But there’s no need to panic for most people, as in many cases, everything will carry on running perfectly well and there will be no visible impact. It does make sense however to start budgeting for or actually implementing a replacement plan because ultimately you are going to have to do something.

What should you do?

Following on from the end of support for XP last year, the additional loss of Windows Server 2003 means that if you still use these two products, you need to price and prepare a plan to update your network. Cloud based server options are available now that make it far less painful that you might imagine, as these largely remove the high one-off capital investments needed for earlier IT systems.

You may decide to do nothing but this carries risks. For example Microsoft released 26 patches for WS2003 last year so even though the system was released 12 years ago, it was still being updated and modified to keep it working correctly. No updates mean that not only security and compliance become compromised but your system will become less and less compatible with newer software releases of other products.

Windows Server 2003 replacement

Speak to IGC about Windows Server 2003 replacement and we can take a look at your current setup and guide you through the options and their costs.