IT administrators take note: Microsoft's Office 2007/Exchange 2007 wave of client and server software is set to exit support in October 2017, and extended custom support agreements are going away.
It may seem like a long way away, but Microsoft's Office 2007 products are hitting their end of support dates in 2017.
For larger enterprise shops which, in the past, have been able to extend support a bit longer with a custom contract as part of their Premier status, there's a new wrinkle next year. Microsoft will not be offering this group custom support agreements as in the past.
I heard about the no more custom support for Office 2007 on-premises client and server products from a reader and a Microsoft spokesperson has confirmed it -- attributing the change to growth in Office 365 subscriptions.
Here's the statement acknowledging the change from a company spokesperson:
The Office 2007 wave of products will be reaching end of support over the next 12 months, as per Microsoft Lifecycle Policy. After those end of support dates, we will no longer offer custom support on any version of Office products (Exchange Server; Office Suites; SharePoint Server; Office Communications Server; Lync Server; Skype for Business Server; Project Server and Visio).
In the past we have offered custom support for a subset of Office products to customers with Premier support contracts. We have seen demand for custom support decline as more customers move to Office 365. Note that this change applies only to custom support, but does not impact any of the standard support offerings.
As always, customers should consult with their account manager regarding their individual migration plans, and may consider services such as Software Assurance Deployment & Planning Services for on-premises upgrades, and Microsoft FastTrack for cloud migrations.
Read more: Microsoft won't provide extended support for Office 2007 products beyond October 2017 deadline | ZDNet