Microsoft announce changes to Windows 10, Office 365 and Office 2019
Microsoft published a new blog post on February 1, 2018 and it is packed full on information relevant to the world of ITAM.
Up to now, each release of Windows 10 has come with an 18-month support schedule. Now, in response to requests from large corporate customers, Microsoft have announced an additional 6 months of “servicing” for certain Windows 10 Enterprise and Education releases.
The included versions, and the new support end dates are:
| Release | Release date | End of Support | End of additional servicing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windows 10, 1607 | August 2, 2016 | April 10, 2018 | October 9, 2018 |
| Windows 10, 1703 | April 5, 2017 | October 9, 2018 | April 9, 2019 |
| Windows 10, 1709 | October 17, 2017 | April 9, 2019 | October 8, 2019 |
Pay more, get more
It was also announced that “additional paid servicing options” will be available for Windows 10 Enterprise and Education, from version 1607 onwards.
For more details, Microsoft say to “contact your account team” – if you do, please be sure to let me know what you find out!
Office 365 Pro Plus – what is supported
Microsoft have clarified that Office 365 Pro Plus is not supported on versions of Windows 10 that are no longer being serviced.
For organisations running both Windows 10 and Office 365 Pro Plus, this means processes must be in place to ensure your ability to keep up with Microsoft’s release pace for the OS. Now that the support period has been extended from 18 to 24 months, this should be easier than before – but is keeping pace with new Windows 10 releases still a potential issue within your organisation?
The year 2020
January 4, 2020 will see several changes occur for Office 365 Pro Plus. From that date, it will no longer be supported on:
- Windows 10 LTSC* releases
- Windows Server 2016 and older
- Windows 8.1 and older
*Long Term Servicing Channel – the new name for LTSB, Long Term Servicing Branch
This means from January 4, 2020 – Office 365 Pro Plus will only run on supported versions of the Windows 10 Operating System.
For those of you who deliver Office via Remote Desktop Services (RDS) and/or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) – Microsoft will be delivering new capabilities for these within Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows Server via the Semi-Annual Channel release schedule.
Office 2019
Office 2019, the next perpetual, on-premises release of Microsoft Office will ship in H2 (July – December) of 2018, with previews of apps being available from Q2 (April – June) 2018.
Office 2019 will be supported on:
- Any supported Windows 10 Semi-Annual Channel release
- Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2018
- The next LTSC release of Windows Server
Deployment methods
Office 2019 will only be available as a Click-to-Run (C2R) install. The traditional MSI package will no longer be offered for Office 2019 apps – although it will still be used for Office Server products.
Are there reasons that the Click-to-Run deployment method can’t be used within your organisation?
Changes to Office 2019 support lifecycle
Previous releases of Office have been under the Microsoft Fixed Lifecycle Policy – 5 years of mainstream support + 5 years of extended support. This won’t be the case with Office 2019 which will instead have 5 years of mainstream support + “approximately” 2 years of extended support which Microsoft say will end on October 14, 2025.
Do you currently take advantage of the full 10-year support lifecycle for Microsoft Office? Will Office 2019 having just 7 years in total mean a change within your organisation?
Further Reading
Windows 10 Servicing FAQ – https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4035050
- Tags: Announcements · licensing · Microsoft · Office2019 · Office365 · Windows10
About Rich Gibbons
A Northerner renowned for his shirts, Rich is a big Hip-Hop head, and loves travel, football in general (specifically MUFC), baseball, Marvel, and reading as many books as possible. Finding ways to combine all of these with ITAM & software licensing is always fun!
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Hi Rich
Useful article. thanks for posting
On Windows 10 1709 – I think you may have got your columns mixed up?
Thank you for great summary…
I’m sure we’re not alone in struggling to keep up with the pace of change. Historically we’ve sweated desktop assets and this is proving much harder with these changes to support lifecycles. Our model has always been OEM OS plus perpetual Office, and to sweat the Office version for as long as possible. As a result we’re a “707” organisation (80%+ of assets running Windows 7 OEM and Office 2007). This is cost-effective, not least because our desktop estate is a fixed, depreciating asset funded by Capex, not Opex.
Moving to subscription-based licensing for Windows/Office is a very significant increase in annual Opex for very little benefit. Whilst 10 is a great OS, Office isn’t worth the investment for the majority of our users. Our challenge is that running supported software versions is increasingly seen as being necessary for regulatory compliance with PCI-DSS and to a lesser extent GDPR.
The pace of change also means that OEM-licensed hardware becomes harder to keep in support, and the OEM license has less value. I haven’t seen any changes to the Product Terms yet regarding Win 10 OEM but I wonder if it will eventually be the case that qualifying OS version for upgrade licenses will be restricted (i.e. if your box came with 1607 OEM, will it cease to be a qualifying OS when that version exits support)?