The IT Nerd

Microsoft support for the Windows XP OS and Office 2003 ends next year. That means no phone support, no security updates, nothing. The software giant has posted a note about this on their website that you should read if you are still running XP or Office 2003. The question is, what does that mean for you? Quite simply, running an unsupported OS and productivity package that doesn’t get updated from a security standpoint is a major risk to your business. Plus software vendors are starting to not write software that supports XP or Office 2003. Thus you’ll be stranded from a computing standpoint. Oh, if you’re a home user, don’t think this doesn’t apply to you. It does.

So, what do you have to consider when you migrate away from XP to Windows 7 or Windows 8 and the latest version of Microsoft Office? Here’s what I tell my customers:

• Inventory the apps that your company (or home) uses and see if they have Windows 7 or 8 compatible versions. Get those applications tested in a test Windows 7 or 8 environment to make sure there are no issues.
• If there’s no Windows 7 or 8 version of a given app, you should immediately start to find a comparable application that works on Windows 7 or 8. For example. There’s a company I’m working with who’s ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system software does not work under Windows 7 or 8 and the vendor has no plans to make it work. I am helping them to test a competitive ERP system as well as scenarios to migrate their data with minimal downtime or negative effects. That should be completed by the end of September and we plan on migrating across to the new system on January 1st of next year in conjunction with their operating system switch.
• If you’ve written your own custom applications, you should have your programmers start to look at testing those applications now. Another thing to consider is that Microsoft via it’s MSDN program will help programmers with any issues they run into. Thus it would also be a good idea to get an MSDN subscription if you don’t have one already.
• Office 2003 users should check to see if any add ins that they use (such as ones for legal professionals) work in newer versions of Office. If they don’t they should source and test newer versions or comparable products.

But the biggest piece of advice that I could give is to not wait. You have less than a year to go before XP and Office 2003 become part of computing history. Plan out and implement your migration strategy before you get into a situation where your migration strategy is compromised.

This entry was posted on July 11, 2013 at 9:33 am and is filed under Tips with tags Microsoft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.