Microsoft has reversed its plans to drop support for Windows NT 4.0
Server at the end of this year following pressure from users.
Lars Ahlgren, senior marketing manager at Microsoft, said: "We'll
now support NT 4.0 users for another year until the end of 2004, as
an extension of their existing support agreement with Microsoft."
The software firm had previously intended to stop all support for
Windows NT 4.0 Server on 31 December.
Ahlgren said the extension would also provide users with free
security fixes until the end of 2004.
Windows NT 4 is still used by thousands of businesses across the
UK. Microsoft's decision to extend support still leaves users with
a difficult decision on whether to migrate to Windows 2000 or
Windows 2003, the next release of Windows NT.
However, analyst firm Gartner warned that any migration to Windows
2000 now would be very short term since development and standard
support is due to end in March 2005.
Gartner analyst Andy Butler said: "We would be very sceptical
advising users to adopt Windows 2000 now as they would be forced to
run it right up until the end of support in 2005."
Instead, Butler said users still running Windows NT 4.0 Server
should give Windows 2003 serious consideration. "We are pretty
confident that users will not be burnt if they deploy Windows 2003
in the third or fourth quarter of this year."
In a mixed environment where users have some Windows 2000 servers,
Butler suggested users move their NT 4.0 installations directly
onto Windows 2003 and skip Windows 2000.