R E L A T E D C O N T E N T

Will NT 4 gain extra time?

Efforts to persuade Microsoft to extend support for NT receive a boost

Peter Williams, IT Week 30 Jun 2004

UK enterprises are intensifying efforts to secure continued support for Windows NT 4 Server, buoyed by a new maintenance deal agreed between Microsoft and a group of US financial companies last week.

Under the agreement, Microsoft said it would supply security updates for NT 4 to the Bits consortium, which represents the 100 largest US financial institutions, for an extended period as they migrate systems to more recent versions of Windows. Although prices were not revealed, Microsoft said the large number of users involved could keep down the cost per company.

David Roberts, chief executive of UK blue-chip user group The Corporate IT Forum (TIF), said he had been pursuing a similar deal in the UK, as many large UK firms have business-critical systems on NT 4. "Migrating those systems is very costly because it took years to make them work and even more to make them robust," he said.

Roberts said UK firms have so far been unable to convince Microsoft to extend support. "(TIF) has tried to put as persuasive an argument as possible to Microsoft. We've had discussions and reinforced this very strongly at every opportunity. But I am not aware of any change," Roberts said. However, he said he was hopeful as Microsoft had adopted a generally more moderate stance.

Microsoft insisted the US deal did not constitute a change in its support policies. "When support is running out, large enterprises come to us and say, this doesn't really sit with our plan. We say, let's talk about it, and so we come to custom agreements," said Lars Ahlgren, senior marketing manager for Microsoft corporate global support.

Security updates for NT 4 are due to stop at the end of this year. In May, Microsoft announced a change in its business and developer software support policy, providing five years of mainstream or full support; increased online support, up from eight to 10 years; and increased extended or chargeable support, up from two to five years. But NT 4 was excluded from this.

At a recent IT Week debate, Roberts said NT 4 was "too young to kill off". But Nick McGrath, head of platform strategy at Microsoft UK, said NT 4, launched in 1996, was showing signs of its age. "NT 4 Service Pack 7 was an exceptionally stable release but it didn't have directory services, it didn't have DNS built in, it was still using broadcast protocols for things like name resolution."

Other experts noted that NT 4 was not affected by high-profile worms like Sasser, and had roughly the same number of security alerts as Windows Server 2003 last year.

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