Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 End of Support 11th April 2017

It will be almost 3 years to the day that Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 went End of Support with Microsoft (08/03/14), Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 will follow suite as it goes End of Support on 11^th April 2017.

What does End of Support mean? 

It doesn’t mean that emails received by the server following the End of Support on 11^th April 2017 will fall into a big internet black hole.  Nor does it mean that sending email will be prohibited until you upgrade your server to a newer, in support version.

It does mean however that Microsoft will no longer be developing any security patches for the product. Not having the latest security patches could result in a breach of your server, which could be worse than not receiving the emails in the first place.

Cyber Security is a major topic in today’s modern workplace with business data being stored on internet facing servers such as Microsoft Exchange or hosted in the cloud.  It is more important now than ever to ensure your servers and systems are updated with the latest security patches.  This should be completed to reduce the chance of being breached or hacked.

With Microsoft Exchange 2007 going End of Support and no longer receiving any security patches to counter the latest threats, this does put the server at potential risk of being compromised and if this is compromised it could lead to an entire network breach.

So, what can you do?

Dependant on the size of your business and requirements, our recommendation would be to move to Office 365 which is effectively the online version of Microsoft Exchange.  Office 365 would potentially save your business a lot of money compared with an on-premise environment where you would need to maintain Exchange Server Licensing on top of maintaining the supporting infrastructure your on-premise email systems run within.

Alternatively, if you have a requirement to keep on-premise email infrastructure you could move to the latest revision of Microsoft Exchange Server, which at present is Microsoft Exchange 2016

How can SBS IT Ltd Help?

SBS IT Ltd have decades of combined experience managing email solutions and the supporting infrastructure.  We have experience with both on premise solutions or cloud hosted.

We can assist with configuring, deploying, migrating, managing and maintaining your email solution and have thousands of mailbox migrations successfully completed to date.

Our partnership with a Microsoft CSP (Cloud Services Provider) enables us offer Microsoft Office 365 licenses at a greatly reduced rate compared to going direct to Microsoft.  See some of the Microsoft Office 365 subscription options here.

For any queries or help and advice please contact us and for more information on our email services see our blog post.