Most people are aware that Windows Server 2003 is coming to the End of Support (EOS) on July 14th 2015. This means enterprises are more or less forced to stop running applications on the WS2003 Operating System, migrate them to a newer OS or replace them. EOS dramatically changes the solid “run-your-business operating platform” to one where there will be no security patches, no compliance and escalating costs. There are few events that open up such large security concerns, throw compliance out the window and have a greater than million dollar price tag all at the same time.
In one of the Microsoft sessions at the recent World Wide Partner Conference (WPC), they revealed that there are 22 million machines still running Windows Server 2003. They estimate that 53% of them are physical, likely running on old hardware providing a big hardware refresh opportunity as well.