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Loading ...How Microsoft’s products are born and how they die: Part 2
The second of a three-part series by David DeJean of Computerworld
Last week, we told you about the history of Microsoft Corp.’s product lifecycle guidelines, which
apply to all Microsoft products, not just operating systems.
During the 1990s, the software vendor found it wasn’t able to bring out products fast enough to satisfy customers. Then the Internet bubble burst and PC sales slowed, and Microsoft brought in product lifecycle guidelines to reduce support liabilities.
First laid out in 2001 and revised in 2002 and 2004, the guidelines defined a three-phase lifespan and created a division between business desktop software and consumer desktop software. (In the beginning it was easier to distinguish between business products based on the NT kernel — like Windows NT and Windows 2000 — and consumer products that ran on top of DOS, like Windows 98 and ME.)
The first phase is the mainstream phase. In the prime of a product’s life, Microsoft provides both free and paid live support, support for warranty claims, and online self-help support information. Software support and maintenance is extensive and free, with downloadable fixes and updates, service packs, and freely available support for problem incidents as well as requests for design changes and new features. Business customers may pay for additional support.
In the second, extended phase, free live support and warranty support end. Free maintenance of consumer products is limited to security fixes. Self-help support information remains available online. Pay-per-incident live support remains available. Software patches and updates continue for business desktop software.
In the third phase, the end of the product’s life, online support information is removed. Patches and updates cease. The product is history.
These phases were set in a schedule with definite dates and durations. Business products would be supported for 10 years — mainstream support for five years, extended support for another five. Consumer products would get five years of mainstream support, but no extended support.
But there are two other factors in a product’s lifecycle — service packs and the availability of a new version of the product.
Service packs have a lifecycle of their own. Support for each service pack ends 24 months after the next service pack release (support for Windows XP Home SP1 support, for example, ended in 2006, two years after the release of SP2 in 2004) or at the end of the product’s support lifecycle, whichever comes first.
When it looked like mainstream support for Windows XP might run out before the next version of Windows made it to market, Microsoft amended the support lifecycle policy to promise that mainstream support would last for either five years or for two years after a successor version is released, whichever period is longer.
While the product lifecycle guidelines set very definite limits on product life spans, Microsoft has shown a willingness to move the goalposts when it gets enough pressure. When Windows XP shipped in December of 2001, it was slated to be in mainstream support until December of 2006. Microsoft’s internal problems with getting Vista out the door finally forced the company to extend the mainstream period for XP out to April of 2009, and to make some other accommodations, like eliminating the distinction between business and consumer versions, so that XP Home will have an extended support phase just like XP Pro.
The result is that next year, on April 14, 2009, Microsoft will end mainstream support for XP, and five years later, on April 8, 2014, it will stop supporting XP at all.
The other lifecycle
But even before that, XP faces a major event in an entirely different lifecycle, one that Microsoft has said very little about: the sales lifecycle.
The key dates for sales come much sooner than 2009 or 2014. In fact, in only a few weeks, on June 30, 2008, Microsoft will stop selling XP through its retail and original equipment manufacturer channels.
System builders, the “white box” retailers who build PCs to order, will be given another seven months, but on January 31, 2009, a couple of months before XP exits mainstream support, Microsoft will stop selling XP altogether (except for a version sold in some less-developed countries and a special arrangement for XP Home in China).
At least that’s the current information. It could change. It has before.
In the past, the company has generally kept the previous version of Windows on the market for two years or so past the introduction of a new version. That was apparently the plan for XP. When Vista finally shipped to enterprise customers in late 2006, the on-sale dates for XP were reset to January 2009.
But the new OS didn’t capture the popular imagination quite the way Microsoft had planned. Vista’s heavy demands for hardware, its rocky support for applications and peripherals, and its draconian security features have left consumers less than enthusiastic.
Enterprise customers have also been slower to move to Vista than to previous versions of Windows. A Microsoft reseller, CDW, reported this January the results of a poll that found that a year after its release, fewer than half of businesses were using or evaluating Vista.
Big OEMs initially switched from XP to Vista when the consumer versions of the OS shipped in January 2007. But by April, Dell, Lenovo, and HP were once again selling machines with XP installed. An April 4 post on Dell’s Web site announced the company’s intention to sell XP on certain systems “until later this summer.” Nearly a year later, the company is still selling XP systems.
In September 2007, Microsoft agreed to a six-month extension of XP’s on-sale dates, along with license provisions for Vista’s business editions that grant buyers the right to downgrade to XP.
All this leaves Microsoft in an unfamiliar position. Its major customers — the OEMs, system builders and enterprise licensees — and a vocal part of the Windows user base all appear to be reluctant users of Vista. None of this means that Microsoft is likely to grant XP another stay of execution. But it does mean we’re going to be in for an interesting few weeks leading up to June 30.
What happens after June 30?
Find out when ComputerWorld Canada publishes the final and third part of the series.
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