What you need to know...
As of July 14, Microsoft will cease issuing security updates for any version of Windows Server 2003. Companies that still run Windows Server 2003 will need to begin planning a migration strategy to make sure their infrastructure is protected.
Slice Managed Solutions can help you protect your infrastructure by migrating you to Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Office 365 or Windows Server 2008 R2 or above. Migrating with Slice will enable you to improve performance, reduce maintenance requirements and increase agility and speed of response to your customers.
What Happens If I Don’t Update?
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No Updates Or Patches
Microsoft will not develop or release any updates or patches after ending support. In 2013, Microsoft released 37 critical updates for Windows Server 2003 R2 under extended support. These critical updates were meant to maintain security and network integrity. As of June 14th, these updates and patches will end, leaving your systems outdated and prone to nefarious activity.
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No Savings
Maintaining physical servers is costly as it is, the additional costs of maintaining legacy servers can add up quickly. Maintenance costs will be required for aging hardware, intrusion detection system, advanced firewalls and network segmentation. The costs of keeping your 2003 Windows Server will exceed the costs of upgrading.
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No Compliance
After June 14th, companies using 2003 Windows Servers will fail to meet most industry-wide compliance standards and regulations. This most certainly will result in lost business and a dramatic increase in the costs of doing business, specifically in the form of high transaction fees and penalties.
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No Peace Of Mind
Once support from Microsoft ends, your virtualized and physical instance of Windows Service 2003/R2 will not pass a compliance audit. Failing a compliance audit means hefty fines.
What Can I Update To?
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Windows Server 2008 R2 or above
Newer Windows Servers support high-performance and enable high-scale workload and infrastructure improvement for storage, identity, networking, virtualization, and more. For those purchasing new servers, Windows Server 2012 R2 is an enterprise-grade platform providing 5x more logical processor support, 4x more physical memory and 16x more memory support per virtual machine.
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Microsoft Office 365
With Microsoft Office 365, your employees will have the freedom to work when and where they need to—on their unique devices—with all the functionality they would have working from their desks. Office 365 is the go to solution for Windows Server 2003 migration and can increase productivity, simplify team collaboration, and enhance your employee’s work-life balance.
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Microsoft Azure
Azure is Microsoft’s cloud platform - a growing collection of integrated services designed to help you move faster, work smarter, and save money. What can you do with Azure?
- Build Infrastructure
- Develop Modern Applications
- Gain Insights From Data
- Manage Identities
Azure is the only major cloud platform ranked by Gartner as an industry leader for both infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and can quickly scale up or down to match demand, so you only pay for what you use.
How Do I Get Started?
Slice Managed Solutions can help create a solution for your Windows Server 2003 end of life migration. We use a 4 step approach to determine your best possible game plan and we’ll work with you to help push it through.
- Discover – We’ll do the research and will determine which applications and workloads are running on Windows Server 2003.
- Assess – Well categorize applications and workloads by type, importance and degree of complexity.
- Target – We’ll recommend a migration destination for each application and workload, either in in a physical datacenter or in the cloud.
- Migrate – We’ll build your migration plan and follow through to the end.
June 14th is right around the corner. Contact us today by phone 212-245-1818 or email sales@sliceitup.net to begin planning your migration.