Microsoft’s Windows Server 2003 is approaching its end-of-life and businesses currently running on this platform are being offered not just the option to upgrade but to actually look at this as an opportunity to bring a transformation of their data centres. Jonathan Vella, partner technology strategist at Microsoft Malta, explains how this is set to help businesses reconsider the way they are positioning themselves for the future.
What where the most salient strong points of Windows Server 2003 when this was introduced in the market?
With the release of Windows Server 2003, there was a paradigm shift in reliability, performance, manageability and scalability. The launch of Windows Server 2003 marks one of the biggest product launches in Microsoft’s history. The goal for Windows Server 2003 was clear: to create a comprehensive, integrated and secure technology infrastructure to help customers reduce costs and increase the efficiency of IT operations. But building software to accomplish this was, quite simply, one of the most ambitious and complicated programming efforts ever at Microsoft.
In general, how has Microsoft impacted businesses with Windows Server 2003 over these past years?
Right from the very start, early adopters running on Windows Server 2003 reported some noteworthy numbers. IT infrastructures, for example, were reporting efficiencies of up to 30 per cent more. Twenty per cent to 30 per cent reductions were also registered in the number of servers needed to perform the same workload whereas performance levels were up to twice as fast across all workloads. There was also a 20 per cent reduction in overall management costs and 35 per cent of customers were able to redeploy IT staff from server management to higher value projects and companies were building applications in half the time with twice the performance.
What was one of the most important achievements of this product?
Perhaps one of the most staggering accomplishments was the 50 per cent reduction in deployment cost and 40 per cent increase in stability over similar Windows NT Server 4.0 infrastructures. Preliminary testing from customers and industry groups have found that the numbers they’re seeing imply that all that went into developing Windows Server 2003 had paid off.
New vulnerabilities discovered in Windows Server 2003 after its ‘end of support’ will not be addressed by new security updates from Microsoft. What vulnerabilities do you envisage?
Computer systems running unsupported software are exposed to an elevated risk to cybersecurity dangers, such as malicious attacks or electronic data loss which are becoming much more sophisticated over time. Windows Server 2003, which was released in April 2003, will create a potential point of intrusion and once you allow somebody in, it becomes much easier for them to access other resources.
For example, business-critical applications hosted on Windows Server 2003 could be compromised, enabling data theft and unauthorized transactions. IT operations teams will find erroneous operation of applications and other software products may occur, linked to defects in Windows Server 2003 that no longer can be corrected, thus leading to extended or permanent loss of those application functions.
How does Microsoft protect businesses against malicious attempts from threatening sources?
Once security researchers identify a vulnerability, they attempt to exploit it on systems that do not have the security update installed on them. They also try to identify whether the vulnerability exists in other products with the same or similar functionality. For example, if a vulnerability is addressed in one version of Windows Server, researchers investigate whether other versions of Windows Server have the same vulnerability. To ensure that our customers are not at a disadvantage to attackers who employ such practices, one long standing principle that the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) uses when managing security update releases is to release security updates for all affected products simultaneously.
This practice ensures customers have the advantage over such attackers, as they get security updates for all affected products before attackers have a chance to reverse engineer them.
How is Microsoft in Malta assisting businesses in this respect?
Each product Microsoft releases has a lifecycle that determines how long we maintain and support the product. With a little over seven months before this product’s End of Support, those businesses who are currently running Windows Server 2003 and/or Windows Server 2003 R2 are being contacted by us and we are letting them know that although this product on which they have been running is approaching its end of life, this can actually be an opportunity for them to take advantage of the many new advancements which will help them reposition their business in the face of future challenges.
From Microsoft’s end, we are encouraging all those businesses who want to to start their migration to start from now preparing their business, as this is the only way to ensure that come July 14, 2015, their critical applications and workloads are safely and securely running. We can help them complete an Immersion Session so that they can see and interact first hand with the technologies that they will be migrating to.