The three years of paid security updates for Windows 7, the ESUs, are now available to businesses of any size. SMEs can, therefore, subscribe to it until 2023 through a Microsoft partner.
With its Microsoft 365 Business offering for companies with fewer than 300 people Office, Outlook, Teams, OneDrive, and security features, Microsoft hopes to attract the largest number of SMEs. But not all have made the leap to Windows 10 and some of them continue to use other versions of the operating system including Windows 7. Their number must be significant enough because Microsoft has decided not to rush them in their evolution while maintaining a protected environment for the users of these SMEs.
In a blog post, the publisher of Redmond announces indeed that it extends its paid program of security updates on Windows 7, known as Extended Security Updates (ESU) to all sizes of business. Now, small and medium-sized businesses that want it will be able to benefit from it until January 2023. ESUs for Windows 7 are billed for each terminal and their price increases every year.
A program that goes through the partners
From 1 December 2019, SMEs will be able to acquire these extended security updates through the Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) program, which is to say by contacting one of Microsoft's partners. To answer all the questions that his customers ask themselves about the end of the support of Windows 7 and Office 2010, the editor brings in a document about twenty pages the answers to the most frequent questions. In particular, he recalls that Windows 7 support stops on January 14, 2020, and that of Office 2020 on October 13, 2020. After this date, SMEs can also benefit from 3 more years of extended security updates. Pay. They can decide to buy at any time during these 3 years. However, if a company expects the 2nd or 3rd year to do so, it will also pay the cost of these ESU for the first year or years of the program. During the summer, Microsoft announced for some customers Enterprise a free first year of extended support Windows 7.
