2019 is coming to a close and with it comes changes to our supported platforms and products.

This year sees the end of support for SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 in our data center.  We have removed the last remnants of these products from our infrastructure.  Windows Server 2008 R2 has also been deprecated and removed from our environment.

Microsoft has set the end of support date for Microsoft Office 2010 for October of 2020 and to ensure that we do not have any customers using unsupported versions of Office we will be reaching out with recommendations to update to Microsoft Office 2016 which is supported through 2025.  Why not 2013?  Why not 2019?  Why have been on Office 2010 for so long in the first place?  All good questions.  Here are the answers.  Office 2013 thru 2019 are all very similar and each use about twice as much RAM and more CPU under similar workloads running on Office 2010.  We have allowed our customers to stay on this version for so long because we did not want you to have to incur the additional cost of running newer versions of office when you did not need the features.  Office 2019 does not use the same installer mechanism as previous versions (MSI) and in multi-user deployment scenarios this can make it more difficult to patch and maintain than previous editions and has problems with a lot of shared addins (such as the very popular Q&A addin so many of our customers use).  That said moving those customers on Office 2010 to Office 2016 allows you to have a modern version of Office with support thru 2025 and still lets you run your addins the same as you did with Office 2010.

SQL Server 2012 is the next product that we will be retiring after Office 2010.  This is some time away as it is still supported until July of 2022.  Why are mentioning it so early then?  Due to the requirements of the applications that you host on SQL Server it is rare that we can just do an upgrade of SQL Server.  Usually, this requires uplifting the software applications that are running on SQL Server.  In turn, this usually requires that a new operating system is deployed to support those applications.  Basically, it may take a year or so to properly plan, test, and execute a plan to migrate from SQL Server 2012 to a new version.

Windows Server 2012 R2 is the next version of Windows to face retirement in our data center.  Microsoft has set the end of life for this product to October 2023.  Still a ways out but just as with SQL Server it takes time to plan the migration and upgrades so we are giving you notice now.

Windows Server 2016 still has quite a bit of support time on it but all the same we have found that while fairly stable that Windows Server 2019 is superior in every way that matters and has significantly reducing patching times.  As such we will be reaching out to those customers on Windows Server 2016 and encouraging you to upgrade to Windows Server 2019 if possible.

The following products are currently supported and present in our managed data center environment.

• Microsoft Office 2010 (still in use but deprecated) supported until 2020
• Microsoft Office 2013 (still in use but not recommended) supported until 2023
• Microsoft Office 2016 (preferred version) supported until 2025
• Microsoft Office 2019 (in use for some edge cases but not recommended) supported until 2025
• SQL Server 2012 (still in use but discouraged) supported until 2022
• SQL Server 2014 (in use and stable) supported until 2024
• SQL Server 2016 (in use and stable) supported until 2026
• SQL Server 2017 (in use and stable) supported until 2027
• SQL Server 2019 (available but too new to recommend) supported until 2029
• Windows Server 2012 R2 (still in use but discouraged) supported until 2023
• Windows Server 2016 (in use but not recommended) supported until 2027
• Windows Server 2019 (preferred version) supported until 2029

If you are interested in an update to any of your hosted components please let us know.