July 14, 2015, Tuesday - The end has come for Windows 2003, as all support and updates for the operating system will stop today.
Microsoft has announced the imminent phasing out of Windows 2003 a few months before. Extended support for the operating system has included security patches and other updates.
The 12-year old Windows 2003 is found to still have a few million users, with 24 million incidences of Microsoft Windows Server 2003 running as of July 2014. Majority of these usage incidences may be from business computers.
The software company's general manager of cloud platforms marketing, Mike Schutz, said that most of those who still use the software have already removed their workload from the operating system. Large companies have relied on Windows 2003 for their server workload.
Transitioning to a newer OS may take a while. Pharmaceutical company Sanofi has already begun taking its server workloads from Windows 2003, to secure to a newer OS. The full transition may reach completion next year, at the soonest.
Support and updates for Windows XP have also ended On April 8 last year. Similarly, companies have gone through lengths to keep the operating system. The US Navy was reported to have paid 9.1 million dollars for Microsoft to continue its support for the OS.
Windows XP and Windows 2003 are popular operating systems for businesses. More than a decade after they have been released, reports have said that in the US, there is at least one computer with either XP or Windows 2003 operating system, per business establishment. In China, about 40 percent of businesses still use the OS.
Users cite the operating systems' security features as the main reason why they have not shifted to more advanced versions. Regular Microsoft pc users will purportedly be unaffected by the ending technical support for the system. The software company's followers are anticipating the release of Windows 10 in two weeks' time.
