As Microsoft is making its way onto the next iteration of the Office system, it is gearing up to kill support for Office 2000 in just two months. Come July 14, 2009, the Redmond company will discontinue all support for Office 2000. The software giant traditionally provides support for its products spanning a consistent number of years. It is the case of Office 2000, which was initially introduced a decade ago, back in 1999, and which is now at the end of its lifecycle. And Microsoft is not only getting ready to pull the plug on Office 2000, but also on the Office update website.

“Microsoft Office 2000 leaves extended support on July 14, 2009. Office 2000 patches published on or before July 14, 2009 will remain on the Download Center,” revealed a member of the Office Sustained Engineering Team. The Redmond company already retired Mainstream Support for Office 2000 in mid-2004. On June 30, 2004, Office 2000, with the following SKUs: Developer Edition, Premium Edition, Professional Edition, Small Business Edition and Standard Edition entered what Microsoft refers to as the Extended Support phase.

On July 14, 2009, the software giant will also retire Extended support for Office 2000. This means that customers will no longer receive any sort of updates for the product, not even security patches for highly Critical vulnerabilities. Users still running Office 2000 need to upgrade to a more recent release of the productivity suite. Microsoft recently released Office 2007 Service Pack 2. At the same time, the company is hard at work producing Office 2010, formerly codenamed Office 14. A Technology Preview of Office 2010 is scheduled to debut at the start of July 2009, with a Beta planned for the second half of this year, and the RTM and GA in the first half of 2010.

“Starting August 1, 2009, Microsoft will discontinue support for the Office Update website. Customers can access the equivalent functionality of the Office Update site via Microsoft Update. This move will allow us to provide a more simplified and consistent experience for users across Microsoft products. At the same time we will also discontinue the Office Inventory Tool. The July Office Inventory Tool will remain available for download on the Download Center, but it will not be updated after August 1, 2009. We recommend that IT admins who use the Office Inventory Tool switch to Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) for deploying Office updates within their corporate network.” the Office Sustained Engineering Team representative added.