UK users wait on further NT4 support

British firms remain hopeful as Microsoft agrees deal with US customers

UK enterprises are intensifying efforts to secure continued support for Windows NT4 Server, buoyed by a new maintenance deal agreed last week between Microsoft and a group of US financial companies.

Under the agreement, Microsoft will supply security updates for NT4 to the Bits consortium, which represents the 100 largest US financial institutions, for an extended period as they migrate systems to more recent versions of Windows.

Although prices were not revealed, Microsoft indicated that the large number of users involved could keep costs down per company.

David Roberts, chief executive of UK blue chip user group The Corporate IT Forum, explained that he had been pursuing a similar deal in the UK, as many large firms have business-critical systems on NT4.

"Migrating those systems is very costly because it took years to make them work and even more to make them robust," he said.

Roberts added that UK firms have so far been unable to convince Microsoft to extend support.

"The Corporate IT Forum has tried to put as persuasive an argument as possible to Microsoft. We've had discussions and reinforced this very strongly at every opportunity, but I am not aware of any change," he said.

However, Roberts is hopeful because Microsoft had adopted a generally more moderate stance.

Microsoft insisted that the US deal did not constitute a change in its support policies.

"When support is running out, large enterprises come to us and say that this doesn't really sit with their plan. We say, let's talk about it, and so we come to custom agreements," said Lars Ahlgren, senior marketing manager for Microsoft corporate global support.

Security updates for NT4 are due to stop at the end of this year.

Microsoft announced a change in its business and developer software support policy in May, providing five years of mainstream or full support, online support up from eight to 10 years, and extended or chargeable support up from two to five years. But NT4 was excluded from this.

At a recent debate hosted by vnunet.com's sister title IT Week, Roberts stated that NT4 was "too young to kill off".

But Nick McGrath, head of platform strategy at Microsoft UK, indicated that NT4, launched in 1996, was showing signs of age.

"NT4 Service Pack 7 was an exceptionally stable release but it did not have directory services, and it did not have DNS built in. It was still using broadcast protocols for things like name resolution," he said.

Other experts noted that NT4 was not affected by high-profile worms like Sasser, and had roughly the same number of security alerts last year as Windows Server 2003.