Microsoft
Only 18 months to go until October 2025. Its already too late for larger organizations to get the project planning and funding in place for whatever mysterious thing will happen to Exchange on-prem next year. Organizations don’t have unlimited resources that they can summon at a moments notice to deal with Microsofts secret plans. This is how things are in the real world.
Lets review:
1) You announced that Exchange 2022, or whatever it was to be called, would be delayed for three years due to a nonsensical claim about "state sponsored threat actors" You weren't previously aware that "state sponsored threat actors" existed ? Can we expect any further attacks to cause Microsoft (a 3 trillion-dollar company) to delay the next release of Exchange by an additional three, six, nine, twelve years?
2) "we’re excited to share" that the original commitment won't be met, that it will take 3+ years to produce another release of Exchange and this will mean a 7+ year gap between the release of Exchange 2019 and the next release. Why would you be excited to share that news?
3) Support for Exchange server 2019 ends October 2025. You state that “the release date for the next version of Exchange Server to the second half of 2025” . Since your history is that these releases usually get pushed back for any excuse, this means that it may not actually appear until 2026, meaning that there would be NO supported release of on-premises Exchange for many months or at best you will force everyone worldwide to upgrade their entire infrastructure within weeks/months. That’s impossible out here in the real world.
4) “We are moving the next version of Exchange Server to our Modern Lifecycle Policy, which has no end of support dates” You are misrepresenting the Modern Lifecycle Policy by framing it as meaning endless support. That’s not the case. From your own Modern Lifecycle references : “Customers must stay current as per the servicing and system requirements published for the product or service” …… “Microsoft must currently offer support for the product or service” …… “Microsoft's policy is to provide a minimum 30 days' notification when customers are required to take action in order to avoid significant degradation to the normal use of the product or service.” …… “For products governed by the Modern Lifecycle Policy, Microsoft will provide a minimum of 12 months' notification prior to ending support if no successor product or service is offered” All of that means that at any time, you can announce that Exchange on-prem will no longer be supported, at all, starting in 2026, regardless of what is said in this blog.
5) “we plan to support the next version of Exchange Server beyond October 14, 2025” That’s just a bizarre statement considering that it won't be released until that time frame. If we follow that logic, you could release it on October 13, 2025 and on October 15, 2025 announce the end of life for Exchange on-prem. No one should be surprised.
