CSA price slashed by Microsoft for Windows XP security patches

The end of support for XP by Microsoft has already happened, but the company is continuing to provide Windows XP security patches to not all, but large enterprise users, who have agreed to pay handsomely for this service.

What’s not known is that Microsoft has made considerable reduction in such custom XP patches, but the exact figure still remains untold. The company meanwhile said that the end of support for Windows XP, which was to happen on April 8^th 2014, was announced in September 2007 only. So large enterprises which have not already migrated, Microsoft decided to present temporary support patches in order to help them seamlessly switch to a more updated and secured operating system.

Its estimated that about 20 to 25 percent of enterprises are still using Windows XP and that one-third of such organizations have more than 10% of their systems still running on XP. The presence of custom applications and peripherals has made migrating to a new platform difficult and challenging for such enterprises.

In 2012, it was estimated that Microsoft was charging for extended support coverage for XP around $5million, which by the year 2013 was chopped down to about $2 million only. Even someone reported, that one of the customers at Microsoft while negotiating managed to cut down Microsoft’s quote of $85 million for a CSA agreement to just $3 million which included all devices in his organization, which were still using XP.

While as per Computerworld, the new ceiling for CSA by Microsoft has been set at around $250 per device or an entire coverage of $250,000.

Microsoft meanwhile is in a dilemmatic situation currently with respect to Windows XP and the company does not wish people to anticipate that they will be continuing to present support even after the deadline for an operating system has passed, which is 13 years old. On the other hand, there are many high-profile shops and organizations still using XP and if users here suffer security issues which gets resolved by the security patches offered by Microsoft, then Microsoft would surely look like a bad guy here.

Even with the prices slashed, the CSA aka Customer Support Agreements are still valid only for users of large enterprises. The CSA is not meant for individual users or small businesses who intend to continue running their beloved Windows XP.

Also, one thing that cannot be overlooked is that there exists a time limit for how long these security patches for XP will be offered for users paying for the CSA coverage. Microsoft is still not ready to utter a word on this part though. Also, if someone wishes to get qualified for the CSA coverage, they must have the migration plans alongside quarterly deployment milestones and an exact date about project completion.

The writer is an Microsoft support specialist at SupportMart - a Global Company offering

technical support for Microsoft . Call 1 800 793 7521, connect with a live technician remotely, and get your issue resolved instantly while speaking on the Windows XP technical support number .