Legacy Archives - EasySAM https://easysam.co.uk/tag/legacy/ Software Asset Management. Simplified. Tue, 09 Sep 2025 11:30:20 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://easysam.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/easysam_icon-60x60.png Legacy Archives - EasySAM https://easysam.co.uk/tag/legacy/ 32 32 Citrix warns products sold through legacy licensing setup face ‘loss of functionality’ https://easysam.co.uk/news/citrix-warns-products-sold-through-legacy-licensing-setup-face-loss-of-functionality/ Tue, 09 Sep 2025 11:24:10 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=35852 Citrix have said that the new licensing scheme aims to reduce manual renewals and management as they shift to a cloud-based framework.

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Citrix have said that the new licensing scheme aims to reduce manual renewals and management as they shift to a cloud-based framework.

Published on 9th September 2025

Citrix has warned products sold under a legacy licensing scheme will face a “loss of functionality” as the company shifts to a new framework next year.

In a blog post published 8 September, the company detailed plans to move to the new licensing scheme, which is set to come into effect in April 2026. Citrix said this shift will deliver a cloud-based framework in a bid to deliver “streamline licensing and faster support”.

Citrix currently operates under a file-based licensing system, which means that customers receive license files specifically applied to customer-hosted servers or NetScaler consoles. Notably, this means product activations and features require a significant amount of manual management.

Jose Augustin, senior director of product management at Citrix, noted this legacy setup has become an “operational slowdown for users”.

“Manual renewals, file management, and frequent outages tied to licensing issues have generated thousands of support cases every quarter,” he wrote.

“Modern Citrix licensing, with its cloud-based architecture, deeper insight through telemetry, and automated processes, will reduce risk and enable faster, more effective support.”

What the new Citrix licensing scheme offers

Under the new cloud-based License Activation Service (LAS), the firm said it aims to simplify customer experiences by “significantly reducing” operational overheads and automating the process.

This means customers won’t need to manually download, allocate, or manage license files, while entitlement updates will be automated.

“Entitlements are updated automatically in the background upon contract renewal, ensuring uninterrupted service,” Augustin wrote.

“Increased resiliency” was another key advantage touted by the firm. Under the LAS setup, license servers will no longer be a “single point of failure for users sessions” and improve environment stability.”

Looking forward, Augustin said the new LAS system will help the company gain deeper insights into product usage, which will support future R&D projects.

“We continuously gather anonymous, aggregated data on how our products are used,” he wrote. “This “always-on” data shapes our future roadmap, enabling us to deliver features and improvements that directly address your needs and pain points.

“This data-driven approach allows us to allocate our R&D investments more strategically, building higher quality products.”

What Citrix products are impacted?

In a separate advisory, Citrix noted that a raft of products will come under the LAS setup next year, including:

  • Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops
  • Citrix Provisioning (PVS)
  • NetScaler
  • XenServer
  • Unicorn Scout

After the April 2026 deadline, Citrix warned these products will “stop recognising file based licenses and will result in a loss of functionality and potential impacts on end-users”.

Exactly what this “loss of functionality” entails is yet to be revealed.

Augustin urged customers to engage with Citrix partners to help support the transition, adding that previous implementations of this licensing model have delivered improvements.

Since late 2024, Citrix has offered LAS support for Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops, for example. Augustin noted the firm has “seen hundreds of customers and partners move to utilise this offering with positive reception”.

Source

https://www.itpro.com/cloud/cloud-computing/citrix-warns-products-sold-through-legacy-licensing-setup-face-loss-of-functionality

Image Credit

Thanakorn Lappattaranan via Vecteezy

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]]> The cost of legacy software in the UK: when and how to modernise? https://easysam.co.uk/knowledge-base/the-cost-of-legacy-software-in-the-uk-when-and-how-to-modernise/ Wed, 04 Jun 2025 09:06:00 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=35291 Legacy software costs have reached alarming levels for UK organisations across all sectors - but what can be done by those still using outdated solutions?

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Legacy software costs have reached alarming levels for UK organisations across all sectors - but what can be done by those still using outdated solutions?

Published on 4th June 2025

The UK government alone allocates nearly half of its yearly tech budget – a massive £2.3 billion – just to keep outdated systems running. This isn’t just a government problem; businesses throughout the country face similar financial burdens from ageing technology.

These outdated systems have evolved into what many experts call a “ticking time bomb” for organisations that depend on them. The lack of flexibility and scalability creates serious operational constraints. What’s more, 90% of IT decision-makers acknowledge these legacy technologies actively prevent their organisations from innovating and operating efficiently. The financial strain goes well beyond basic maintenance—running a single legacy system costs approximately $30 million on average.

Security issues make the legacy problem even worse. Research shows around 32% of UK businesses have suffered cybersecurity breaches within the past 12 months, with outdated systems playing a major role in these vulnerabilities. The situation is deteriorating—the percentage of organisations implementing critical security updates within two weeks has fallen from 43% in 2021 to just 31% in 2023.

Most organisations currently spend between 60-80% of their IT budgets maintaining existing hardware and legacy applications. Yet studies indicate that retiring these outdated systems could slash hardware and operational expenses by 65%. In this article, we’ll examine when legacy software becomes financially unsustainable and how you can modernise your systems strategically to cut costs, enhance security, and fuel business growth.

Breaking Down the True Cost of Legacy Software in the UK

Legacy systems drain UK organisations’ finances at alarming rates. One-quarter of digital systems in central government departments are outdated, with some areas reporting figures as high as 70%. These aging technologies impose substantial costs that extend far beyond simple maintenance.

Annual £2.3B Spend on Legacy System Maintenance

The UK government allocates a staggering £2.3 billion—nearly 50% of its annual tech budget—solely to maintaining outdated legacy systems. This massive expenditure represents just the tip of the iceberg. Maintenance costs for these systems are significantly higher than modern alternatives, often tripling or quadrupling in comparison.

In 2024, NHS England reported 123 major system failures that disrupted patient care and forced staff to revert to manual, paper-based methods. Despite knowing the benefits of modernisation, organisations continue operating with inefficient systems. Take the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS), which recently announced slowing migration away from legacy systems due to budget limitations, even while acknowledging this would increase uncertainty related to future costs.

Hidden Costs: Downtime, Support, and Licensing

Direct maintenance expenses tell only part of the story. The hidden costs of legacy software create an even more troubling financial picture. System disruptions and downtime from outdated technology hit Fortune 500 business productivity to the tune of almost £1.19 trillion. In the UK specifically, 48% of workers waste three hours or more per day due to inefficient systems, costing the average UK business at least £28,000 annually.

What happens when your legacy programs depend on outdated operating systems? You’ll face expensive special licensing arrangements as vendors shift focus to newer systems. The Royal Navy learned this lesson the hard way in 2015, paying £7.15 million to continue using Windows XP after their legacy programs became dependent on older Windows products. Finding skilled professionals to maintain these systems grows increasingly difficult each year, forcing companies to either hire at premium rates or invest in extensive training programs.

Other hidden expenses include:

  • Extended vendor or third-party support for end-of-life systems
  • Integration challenges requiring costly middleware solutions
  • Security breach costs (averaging £7.5 million per incident in the US)
  • Employee dissatisfaction leads to higher turnover rates

Technical Debt and Its Long-Term Financial Impact

Technical debt, the “tax” companies pay on development to address existing technology issues, accounts for approximately 40% of IT balance sheets according to McKinsey research. Organisations typically pay an additional 10-20% to address tech debt on top of any project costs. The consequences are severe: companies in the bottom 20th percentile in terms of tech debt severity are 40% more likely to have incomplete or cancelled IT modernisations than those in the top 20%.

CIOs estimate that tech debt amounts to 20-40% of their entire technology estate value before depreciation. Even more concerning, 30% of surveyed CIOs believe more than 20% of their technical budget intended for new products gets diverted to resolving tech debt issues. This vicious cycle translates into enormous costs through lost opportunities and wasted resources.

Security and Compliance Risks of Legacy Technology

Legacy systems create security vulnerabilities that go far beyond simple operational problems. As these outdated systems age, they become increasingly attractive targets for cyberattacks, putting organisations at risk of both reputation damage and serious financial losses.

Unpatched Vulnerabilities in End-of-Life Systems

What happens when software reaches end-of-life (EOL) status? Vendors stop creating security updates, leaving known vulnerabilities permanently exposed. These exploits become common knowledge among hackers, who create specialised tools that make these systems easy targets even for criminals with limited technical skills.

The consequences can be devastating. EOL software remains defenceless against newly discovered threats, with no patches forthcoming. This security gap makes these systems prime targets, especially as attackers actively scan networks looking specifically for outdated technology. The scale of this problem is significant—a 2023 report from the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) found that over 60% of cyberattacks against European businesses exploited known vulnerabilities in unsupported software.

The financial impact is substantial. The Ponemon Institute found that in 2023, organisations using outdated or unsupported software faced an average data breach cost of £3.53 million. Beyond the immediate breach costs, companies with vulnerabilities in unsupported software experienced an average of 8.3 days of downtime, creating significant losses in both productivity and revenue.

GDPR and CCPA Non-Compliance Due to Outdated Software

Legacy systems often create serious compliance problems with modern data protection regulations. These outdated systems frequently cause unintentional GDPR violations, as tech analyst Auger noted when calling for “increased vigilance,” pointing out that many companies violate regulations without even realising it. Basic GDPR principles become difficult to implement when legacy systems generate standardised instructions containing excessive information.

The penalties for non-compliance are severe. Under GDPR, organisations face tiered fines up to £15.88 million or 4% of annual turnover (whichever is greater) for violations such as processing data without proper customer consent. Additionally, GDPR requires that consent be explicitly given rather than assumed through failure to opt out, and customers must maintain the “right to be forgotten”—requirements that legacy systems typically struggle to support.

Even organisations trying to implement compensating controls like network segregation still face significant compliance challenges. As one expert bluntly stated, “Being out of support will definitely affect your compliance with things like the Cyber Essentials scheme, ISO 27001, and the GDPR and DPA—the PCI DSS too”.

Case Example: Microsoft Midnight Blizzard Breach

The January 2024 Microsoft breach demonstrates how even sophisticated organisations can be compromised through legacy components. The Russian state-sponsored actor Midnight Blizzard (also known as Nobelium) began their attack in November 2023 by using a password spray attack to compromise a legacy non-production test tenant account.

From this initial foothold, the attackers accessed corporate email accounts belonging to Microsoft’s senior leadership team and employees in cybersecurity and legal departments, stealing emails and attached documents. The incident clearly showed how attackers can exploit legacy components to bypass otherwise robust security measures.

Microsoft admitted the breach “highlighted the urgent need to move even faster” and committed to “apply current security standards to Microsoft-owned legacy systems and internal business processes, even when these changes might cause disruption”. Following the breach, Midnight Blizzard ramped up their attack volume, with password spray attempts increasing by as much as 10-fold in February compared to January 2024.

This high-profile incident shows how legacy systems often become the weakest link in an otherwise strong security posture. It underscores why organisations must prioritise modernising outdated technology before it becomes a security liability that attackers can exploit.

Operational Limitations and Productivity Loss

Legacy systems create problems that go far beyond financial and security concerns. These outdated technologies severely hamper workforce productivity and operational effectiveness, with tangible impacts on daily business operations across multiple dimensions.

Employee Frustration and Workflow Inefficiencies

Have you ever watched employees struggle with slow, outdated systems? The productivity costs are staggering. Nearly half (46%) of UK workers believe their employer lags behind in adopting modern workplace technology. This frustration translates directly to lost time—slow computers cost employees up to 5.5 days annually in lost productivity. Even more concerning, 48% of UK workers waste three hours or more per day due to inefficient systems, costing businesses approximately £28,000 yearly.

This dissatisfaction doesn’t just affect daily operations. It drives talent away from your organisation. About 30% of workers consider seeking new employment when workplace technology doesn’t meet their expectations. Additionally, 60% of employees report experiencing frustration with software systems in the past two years, with 56% wishing management would simply revert to previous systems.

Data Silos and Poor Integration with Modern Tools

Legacy systems typically operate as standalone solutions, creating disconnected information repositories that prevent effective collaboration. These data silos fragment workflows and make routine tasks unnecessarily time-consuming. Organisations report spending just 19% of their time actually analysing data for its intended purpose, while wasting a whopping 81% on searching (20%), preparing (37%), and protecting (24%) that same data.

The integration problem compounds these inefficiencies. Without proper integration capabilities, legacy systems cannot effectively communicate with modern tools like cloud platforms and API-driven architectures. Research shows these process inefficiencies can cost companies 30% of annual revenue and waste 26% of an employee’s workday.

Customer Experience and Brand Reputation Impact

Poor customer experiences often trace back directly to outdated technology. In a recent survey, 63% of respondents identified long wait times as a major pain point, while 51% expressed frustration with repeatedly providing identical information to different representatives.

The impact on customer perception can be devastating—43% of customers would rather clean a toilet than call customer support, largely due to the horrible experiences created by outdated technology. These legacy systems frequently produce inconsistent user experiences that erode trust and drive customers away. In fact, 37% of customers confirmed they would switch to competing businesses that better meet their service expectations.

The bottom line? Organisations using modern, integrated systems report 10% higher customer loyalty and engagement rates than those relying on outdated technology. This difference directly affects your bottom line and long-term business sustainability.

When to Modernise? Key Triggers and Risk Indicators

How do you know when it’s time to update your legacy systems? Identifying specific warning signs early can prevent severe business impacts down the road. Nearly 80% of organisations now worry about vendor lock-in risks, showing growing awareness of the dangers lurking in outdated technology.

Unsupported Software and Vendor Lock-in

Vendor lock-in happens when businesses can’t easily switch to new products or services without paying substantial costs. This dependency creates major business vulnerabilities—vendors might suddenly raise prices, alter product offerings, or worse, completely stop supporting critical systems. The banking sector faces particular challenges, with roughly 94% of U.S. financial institutions rely on legacy core systems. UK financial services show similar concerning patterns.

When software reaches end-of-life status, organisations face tough choices: pay premium rates for extended support, accept growing security risks, or undergo disruptive migration. Companies running defunct technology inevitably hit compatibility walls when trying to connect with modern tools, creating what industry experts call “integration mazes”.

Increased Incident Response Time and Costs

Legacy systems frequently suffer from slow response times, crashes, and unplanned downtime that disrupt essential workflows. One financial services firm using outdated transaction processing systems experienced repeated outages that delayed customer payments and damaged trust.

Research shows organisations using legacy incident management systems struggle with:

  • Delays in responding to incidents
  • Inability to share information effectively between departments
  • Limited reporting capabilities

Inability to Scale or Meet New Business Demands

Legacy applications weren’t built to handle the dynamic scalability that today’s businesses require. As organisations grow, these systems buckle under increasing data volumes and transactions, creating performance bottlenecks. If your company faces frequent crashes, slow response times, or compatibility issues, these are clear signals that modernisation can’t wait.

How to Modernise Legacy Systems Safely and Strategically

Modernising legacy systems isn’t something you can approach haphazardly. Success requires thoughtful planning that balances costs, risks, and business continuity. With the right strategy, you can transform those outdated technologies into competitive advantages without disrupting your core operations.

Phased Migration vs. Full Replacement

Most organisations find incremental modernisation offers better risk management than complete system overhauls. The “Strangler pattern” provides a practical approach for gradually replacing legacy components while keeping operations running smoothly. This method allows new and legacy systems to work side by side during transition periods.

Full replacement becomes necessary when systems are severely outdated or fundamentally incompatible with modern business requirements. While rebuilding from scratch carries higher costs and risks, it can deliver superior long-term results for systems that are beyond incremental improvement.

Cloud Adoption and Hybrid IT Models

Moving to cloud environments creates both scalability and cost benefits through several approaches:
  • Rehosting ("lift and shift"): This simply migrates applications without changing their code, primarily switching the underlying infrastructure.
  • Replatforming: Here you move applications while making minor optimisations to take advantage of cloud capabilities.
  • Refactoring: This involves restructuring code to improve efficiency without changing core functionality.

Hybrid IT models have proven especially effective for many organisations. By combining on-premises legacy systems with cloud technologies, businesses can maintain critical legacy functions while gradually adopting modern infrastructure. About 74% of organisations manage these hybrid environments either in-house or with managed service providers.

Third-Party Support and Cost Optimisation

Independent support providers offer viable alternatives to expensive vendor maintenance for legacy systems. These services typically deliver similar support at significantly reduced prices. Organisations can access:

  • 24/7 service desk support for all incidents
  • Support for customisations
  • Thousands of support documents
  • Flexible contracts with performance clauses

This approach extends the useful lifetime of legacy systems while organisations develop comprehensive modernisation strategies, ultimately reducing the pressure for rushed migrations.

The Path Forward for Legacy Modernisation

Legacy systems place a heavy burden on UK organisations. The UK government’s annual £2.3 billion expenditure on maintaining outdated technology highlights this financial drain. These systems also create significant security vulnerabilities, with about 32% of UK businesses experiencing cybersecurity breaches within the past year.

The operational inefficiencies make matters worse. Nearly half of UK workers waste three hours daily due to outdated systems, costing businesses around £28,000 annually. Customer experience suffers too—43% of customers would rather clean a toilet than deal with customer support hampered by legacy technology.

Organisations need to recognise warning signs before these issues escalate. Unsupported software, slower incident response times, and inability to scale all indicate the need for modernisation. The question isn’t whether to modernise, but how to approach this transformation strategically.

For many organisations, phased migration offers a balanced approach. The “Strangler pattern” allows gradual replacement of legacy components while maintaining business continuity. Cloud adoption through re-hosting, re-platforming, or refactoring provides scalability benefits without complete system rebuilds.

Though legacy modernisation requires initial investment, the long-term benefits far outweigh these costs. Organisations that retire outdated systems can cut hardware and operational expenses by up to 65%. Security risks decrease substantially as modern systems provide regular updates against emerging threats.

Start your modernisation journey with a thorough assessment of current systems, followed by a strategic plan that balances immediate needs with long-term goals. Whether you choose phased migration, cloud adoption, or third-party support during transition, each approach offers viable paths away from the mounting costs of legacy technology.

The time to act is now. Every day spent maintaining outdated systems diverts resources from innovation and growth. Through strategic modernisation, your organisation can transform legacy burdens into competitive advantages that drive business success in an increasingly digital marketplace.

Source

https://www.netguru.com/blog/legacy-software-cost-uk

Image Credit

cottonbro studio via Pexels

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]]> Legacy IT: A technical debt field of dreams https://easysam.co.uk/knowledge-base/legacy-it-a-technical-debt-field-of-dreams/ Tue, 30 May 2023 08:58:13 +0000 https://easysam.co.uk/?p=27655 The IT industry is always looking to the future and the release of the next big thing, but it can come at a cost to ageing infrastructure.

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The IT industry is always looking to the future and the release of the next big thing, but it can come at a cost to ageing infrastructure.

Published on 30th May 2023

In Field of Dreams, while walking in his cornfield, Kevin Costner’s character hears a whisper: “If you build it, he will come,” which, without giving the plot away, inspires him to build a baseball field.

In IT, if you build it, they – the users – will indeed come, that is, until something better comes along. Then it becomes a noose around your neck.

IT leaders are forever dealing with legacy systems and it is hard to find an IT leader who will have thought out well in advance, how the technical debt introduced during his or her tenure, will be maintained in years to come, when the next CIO is in charge.

And as Martin Biggs, managing director of EMEA at third-party support firm Spinnaker, points out, the enterprise software providers want their customers to upgrade on-premises legacy systems to new cloud-based offerings. More often than not, legacy systems that require updating or a security patch, may remain unpatched for months.

The IT sector doesn’t really like to consider the problem of technical debt. Every IT conference and product pitch is about the next greatest piece of tech innovation. It is a question Computer Weekly put to Alex Case, the public sector industry principal for the EMEA region at Pegasystems.

Fixing legacy IT in the public sector

In light of the recent Public Accounts Committee (PAC) report looking into the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ (Defra) legacy IT systems, Case, who has worked extensively in the public sector, believes low code tooling can help to overcome the bottlenecks of the vertically integrated monolithic IT systems that run the business workflows in government departments.

As reported by the PAC, Defra has a legacy IT problem and it is not alone. The PAC’s Tackling Defra’s ageing digital services report has profound implications across government departments. Government digital services often rely on outdated and unsupported legacy IT systems. “We concluded that there was no clear plan to replace or modernise legacy systems and data that were critical to service provision but were often old, unsupportable, vulnerable and a constraint on transformation,” the PAC warned in the report.

Case and other supporters of low-code tooling, believe that the best way forward is to look at the inefficiencies in the workflow and join the broken bits via a low code platform. This makes sense in the short to medium term, as it offers a way to build efficiencies which workaround legacy IT system. But such a strategy ultimately leads to data silos and low-code application sprawl. Isn’t it time the industry recognises the problem that is now brewing?

Source

https://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Cliff-Sarans-Enterprise-blog/Legacy-IT-A-technical-debt-field-of-dreams

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Pixabay via Pexels

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]]> Microsoft ups security protection for older versions of Windows https://easysam.co.uk/news/microsoft-ups-security-protection-for-older-versions-of-windows/ Tue, 13 Feb 2018 16:35:00 +0000 https://wptest.easysam.co.uk/?p=16051 Both Windows 7 and 8.1 will now get Windows Defender protection.

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Both Windows 7 and 8.1 will now get Windows Defender protection.

Published on 13th February 2018

Microsoft has just announced that it is adding its Windows Defender ATP to older versions of its operating system, namely Windows 7 and Windows 8.1. But the announcement isn’t as unambiguous as one would expect.

Announcing the new features in a blog post, Microsoft said “customers moving to Windows 10 can add Windows Defender ATP Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) functionality to their Windows 7, and Windows 8.1 devices, and get a holistic view across their endpoints.”

The company says many people have different devices in their environments, and they want them to have the same level of security across all of those.

It also said security is the main driver behind the adoption of Windows 10.

“We hear from our customers security is one of the biggest motivators for their move to Windows 10,” Microsoft’s Rob Lefferts wrote. “With Windows 10 we built the most secure Windows ever, by hardening the platform itself and by developing Windows Defender Advanced Threat Protection (ATP) – a unified endpoint security platform that helps stop breaches.”

Until now, Windows Defender ATP was only available for Windows 10, and a few partners in preview as protected endpoints for other operating systems (not of Microsoft’s origin).

The older operating systems will get the new security solution this summer.

Source

https://www.itproportal.com/news/microsoft-ups-security-protection-for-older-versions-of-windows/

Image Credit

Pixabay via Pexels

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]]> Office 365 removes older versions of Office based products https://easysam.co.uk/news/office-365-removes-older-versions-of-office-based-products/ Fri, 06 Jan 2017 11:01:00 +0000 https://wptest.easysam.co.uk/?p=16422 You may need to say bye bye to legacy versions of applications like Visio and Project.

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You may need to say bye bye to legacy versions of applications like Visio and Project.

Published on 6th January 2017

A number of organisations who have already gone through this process may have already experienced this, but for those of you who are thinking about upgrading to Office 365, there is a slight bump in the road that you need to be aware of if you want to run Office 365 with previous versions of the likes of Visio and Project.

Firstly, there is the obvious shift from device, perpetual license to user subscription. This means that you no longer own the license, instead you are merely renting the software for an agreed period of time.

Issue impacts standalone and Deferred Channel organisations

If you have a standalone copy of Excel installed for compatibility issues or interaction with another system, then this will fall victim of the automatic uninstall. This error mainly impacts users who are on the Deferred Channel. The Deferred Channel is when an organisation defers the monthly Office 365 updates, and instead updates every four months.

This is a great option for organisations who don’t want to upgrade every month. They may have Office installed on sensitive machines that they don’t want to change too often, or conflicting software that does not work with the latest updates.

Office 365 upgrade automatic removals

When you deploy and upgrade your instances of Office, Office 365 actually removes older versions of Office based software (Office suites, Visio, Project etc) automatically during the install process. This means that users have a shiny new version of Office, but no Visio or Project.

If you try and re-install and use Project or Visio 2010 or 2013, for example, you will be presented with an error like the screen shot below.

Alarm bells will start to ring, as the error clearly states that older versions of Visio and Project no longer works with Office 365. Ah, that could be a problem.

You can try and re-install the legacy applications, but you will have errors in trying to collaborate or share files with Office 365 and the older versions of the software. In some cases, it simply does not work.

There have also been reports of the reverse happening; installing the new version of Visio or Project and having the likes of Office 2013 or 2010 automatically removed!

This causes a major headache for organisations that have a major investment in Visio and Project or a large quantity of installs. What should you do?

Your options

If you have your legacy Visio and Project applications covered under Software Assurance (SA), then you are entitled to the latest version. This allows you to remove the 2010 or 2013 versions, and install the Visio/Project for Office 365 versions. Remember, this will be a shift from device licensing to user subscription.

Microsoft also have a special offer for people wishing to upgrade their licenses. It’s actually a free upgrade, if you meet the terms and conditions. Microsoft states “This offer only applies to standalone Office 2013 products purchased via an authorized Microsoft retailer; standalone Office 2013 products purchased via Microsoft volume licensing agreements are excluded from this offer”. So, if you have some sort of MVL then you can’t claim your free upgrade.

If you do qualify for the free license upgrade, then you better get your skates on as you have until February 2017 to claim your new licenses.

If you have some form of MVL and don’t have Software Assurance on your older copies of Visio and Project, then it appears that you will have to purchase a new license for the latest version if your users still require the software. Naturally, this could be a large expenditure, so check your current Microsoft agreement, make sure all of your legacy Visio & Project users still need the software (internal review), and budget for new licenses.

Of course, the other option is to do nothing and look on the market for an alternative that will work with Office 365 and may be cheaper!

Source

https://www.itassetmanagement.net/2017/01/06/office-365-removes-older-versions-office-based-products/

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Pexels

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