On October 14, 2025, six months from now, Exchange Server 2016 and Exchange Server 2019 will reach end of support. It’s critical to plan your upgrade now to remain supported and secure.
After Octob...
Updated Apr 11, 2025
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Publishing End of Support without having a working product in GA doesn't help. There should be always a decent amount of overlaps between transitions.
There should have been a version released around 2021-22, which would have lasted the support till 2027-28. As it didn't happen, Microsoft should revisit thier Extended Support dates for Exchange 2019. The trend of 2-3 yrs of overlap shouldn't cut down to 3 months.
Justification, its the same code base isn't enough to mitigate the risk it poses to production workloads.
The severely shortened lifecycle for 2019 was announced a couple of years ago to substantial dismay. Not helped by the fact originally the what was nicknamed "vNext" is actually substantially late compared to what was originally suggested. There will be just three months from release of SE before all prior versions are out of support, with the major version 2016 and 2019 being "cut off" from support on the same day. Not what anyone expects regarding enterprise class software but Microsoft confirmed a year ago there would be no reprieve even though the Exchange Server 2019 lifecycle doesn't line up with the normal "standard" Microsoft uses. No summer holidays for Exchange admins this year!
- Nino_Bilic
Microsoft
I understand the sentiment, but this is incorrect.
Exchange Server 2019 lifecycle was set at the date of release and it has been listed as "Extended support end date" of "October 2025" since the end of calendar year 2018 when Exchange 2019 was released: Exchange Server 2019 - Microsoft Lifecycle | Microsoft Learn
Where I am going with this is - it is incorrect that shooter lifecycle (when compared to previous versions) was announced a few years ago. What is probably a more accurate statement is that "many have become aware of shorter lifecycle a few years ago" after "they made assumptions that the lifecycle is the same as previous versions".
Exchange Online won't be an option for many customers in Europe. Sure, best option for Microsoft would it be. The demand for on premises services is still high and to be the real owner of the data is even higher. The pressure by cutting support for the existing version and not delievering the successor in a timely manner is just a means of more pressure to convince customers for booking US clouds, nothing else.
Exchange on prem is the way to go and if there would be no reasonable price tag and lifecycle, reaching out for real alternatives is the next task.
