If you ever feel ignored when offering technical advice to executives or anyone ranking above you in your business then this statistic about Server 2003 that The Register quotes will come as no surprise, "47 percent of 1,000 Fortune 500 IT executives had no idea that end-of-life was coming".  Of course this does not signify that they were never told nor that Microsoft obfuscated the EoL date, it shows that they completely ignored the professionals that work for them and warned them.   Now they will have a choice, they can run servers that no longer receive security updates nor support from Microsoft or they can pay $600 per server for a year of extended support, with that amount likely increasing every year.  It does not make business sense to migrate to every new server or client platform that is released but postponing that upgrade for over a decade in the assumption that your supplier will never cut you out is bordering on idiocy.   Just to add to your frustration, none of those supposed IT executives are likely to be fired as a direct result of this poor planning and on the off chance one does leave; the severance they pick up will likely be worth more money than you have made since the release of Server 2003.

"MICROSOFT HAS PUT a price on extended support for servers running Windows Server 2003 after it reaches end-of-life this summer."

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