Business customers should start planning the transition to newer software

Apr 10, 2012 12:32 GMT  ·  By

On April 8th, 2014, Microsoft will officially kill the support for two popular products in its offering, namely Windows XP and Office 2003.

On Monday, the company started the two-year countdown until the support for these products is phased out.

The Redmond-based software giant was also keen on making sure that its customers were aware of this state of facts.

Specifically, business users will need to plan the transition to a newer operating system, while also considering the adoption of a more recent version of a productivity suite.

“If you still have some PCs running Windows XP and Office 2003 in your organization, now would be a good time to start migrating them to Windows 7 and Office 2010,” Microsoft’s Stella Chernyak notes in a recent blog post.

The industry evolved a lot since the official release of Windows XP and Office 2003, and these products became obsolete, being unable to fit the current needs of users.

“Modern users demand technologies that fit their personal workstyle and allow them to stay productive anywhere anytime, while businesses have an ever increasing need to protect data and ensure security, compliance and manageability,” Stella Chernyak continues.

Newer flavors of Windows and Office coming from Microsoft should be able to fulfill these demands, and organizations are strongly advised to consider moving to new products in due time.

To all those who would rather wait a bit longer for the next flavor of Windows and Office to arrive, Microsoft says hurry up and decide now.

“Not only is it important for companies to complete deployment before support runs out, but they should also be aware that by upgrading to Windows 7 and Office 2010 today they can gain substantial results today while laying the foundation for future versions of these products,“ Chernyak explains.

“And with over 525 million Windows 7 licenses sold since its release, many customers are already taking advantage of everything Windows 7 has to offer.”

Through adopting Windows 7 and office 2010, companies ensure that their employees remain productive and that enterprise data is secure.

You can download Windows 7 from Softpedia via this link. If you want to try the newer Windows 8 platform from Microsoft, you'll find it on this page.