Microsoft offers Windows 7 extended life support to small and midsize businesses

Microsoft is to offer extended life support for Windows 7 to small-and-midsize businesses (SMBs), starting 1^st December 2019.

The announcement essentially means that businesses of all sizes can now opt to pay (key word) to receive security updates for Windows 7 running on their machines.

Windows 7 will hit its end-of-life on 14th January 2020. After that, the OS will no longer get free security fixes and updates. However, Microsoft will continue to provide updates to customers who are ready to pay a fee for next three years.

"While many of you are well on your way to deploying Windows 10, we understand that everyone is at a different point in the upgrade process. With that in mind, today we are announcing that, through January 2023, we will extend the availability of paid Windows 7 Extended Security Updates (ESU) to businesses of all sizes," said Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365, in a blog post.

Microsoft had earlier announced that Windows 7 ESU would only be offered to Professional and Enterprise customers with volume licensing arrangements. With this announcement, it is extending the offer to all business customers as long as they have a Microsoft 365 Business subscription and are ready to pay a yearly fee for using Windows 7.

The ESU programme will continue until January 2023, and will offer security fixes like the ones currently provided to Windows 7 users for free.

SMBs will be able to purchase security updates from qualified Cloud Solution Provider partners on a per device basis. The price for purchasing security updates for Windows 7 after January 2020 are expected to be steep, increasing each year, until January 2023.

The ESU pricing for Windows Pro users goes from $50 per device (first year) to $200 per device (third year). For Windows Enterprise users, the pricing goes from $25 per device (first year) to $100 per device (third year).

In August, Microsoft said that its Enterprise Agreement (EA) and Enterprise Subscription Agreement (EAS) customers using Windows 10 Enterprise E5, Government E5, Microsoft 365 E5, and Microsoft 365 E5 Security subscriptions will be able to receive extended security updates for Windows 7 for one more year at no additional cost.

The company has also set up a dedicated 'Micrsoft Partner Centre' page to provide detailed information about Windows 7 ESU programme.

All support programmes for Windows 7 will come to an end in January 2023, according to Microsoft.

On Tuesday, the firm also announced general availability of its Windows Virtual Desktop client, which allows customers virtualise Windows 7 desktops and also includes ESUs until January 2023 at no additional cost.