Microsoft's EOL Plans And New OS Spell Big Opportunity For Channel Partners
By Tom Blankenhorn, Director, Ingram Micro
Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows Server 2003 support in July, which means the vendor is no longer issuing updates and patches for the product. Several weeks back they started the “free upgrade” to Windows 10. From a solutions provider perspective, these moves help create a host of migration and upgrade opportunities for the channel.
If you aren’t talking to your customers about these opportunities, you should — because another Microsoft product with a massive installed base, SQL Server 2005, is fast approaching its end-of-life, too. The closing date is April 12, 2016, for those taking note.
Why Migrate?
There are plenty of reasons to advise customers to migrate out of unsupported solutions and into new platforms — the most obvious of which revolves around security risks. Without the patches and updates Microsoft issues regularly to strengthen security and boost performance, the potential for a cyberattack increases substantially. That means customer data, intellectual property, and competitive business information could end up in the hands of cybercriminals.
In addition, unsupported servers cannot pass compliance audits, so any organization still running Server 2003 — or SQL Server 2005, come April 12 — could well run afoul of data privacy and security regulations such as Sarbanes Oxley, HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), and ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library).
In retail, organizations also have to contend with stringent PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliance designed to protect cardholder privacy. This has recently been highlighted with some of the more high-profile intrusions, such as the one that affected millions of Target customers. Windows Server 2003 has been used extensively in e-commerce, and is often used in concert with SQL Server 2005 to house point of sale and inventory systems. Running either or both of these Microsoft product versions invites serious consequences, and a potential loss of compliance. A business could open the door to intrusion and lose access to critical data as well as the right to process transactions with major credit cards.
Another potential consequence of hanging on to Server 2003 or SQL Server 2005 is compatibility issues with newer applications and systems, possibly hampering performance and user productivity.
IT Trusted Advisor Opportunities
These end-of-life events and refresh campaigns present an opportunity to cement the IT trusted advisor role. For one thing, you probably know whether your customers are running Windows Server 2003 and SQL Server 2005 — or are being asked to take advantage of the free upgrade to Windows 10 — so you can advise them on the potential repercussions of continuing to run unsupported server solutions.
If you don’t know, investigate by talking to the customer. It’s possible that some customers aren’t even aware of what they have, which can happen in large environments sprawled over multiple locations. In such cases, you can launch a discovery process to educate the customer on how to fine-tune their environment through upgrades and migration to new technology.
Tell customers about available migration paths — Windows Server 2012 for Server 2003 and SQL Server 2014 for SQL Server 2005. Also, take the opportunity to introduce them to other solutions, including the Azure platform and Office 365 productivity suite, both of which provide a pathway to the cloud.
These solutions generate recurring revenue for you, while creating predictable costs for the customer that are easier to budget for. They also transfer costs from the capex to the opex columns, minimizing upfront investments and easing a company’s tax burden. In addition, migration creates the opportunity to discuss upgrades to ancillary products, including storage and power and cooling.
Opportunities specific to a SQL Server migration revolve around the need to upgrade business-critical and productivity applications, including billing, finance and Office. Explain to customers that these application upgrades are prerequisites to a SQL Server migration.
The customer may not be thinking about — or even be aware of — any of this, so you need to bring it up. Customers may resist by resorting to the old “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” rationale — the onus is on you to go over all the implications of running the business on unsupported servers. If a major issue occurs, the customer could stand to lose millions of dollars and have a hard time recovering.
As a trusted advisor, your role is to educate, advise, and execute. And these end-of-life opportunities are tailor-made for trusted advisors, allowing you to demonstrate your expertise in very tangible ways. You can further strengthen your value by telling the customer about your backing from suppliers with the depth and breadth of experience to support you in migrating them to new technology solutions.