Support for M365 Apps (O365) on Windows 2022

MI5-Agent I hear you, especially on not being able to upgrade to the latest OS until 1-2 years after release, so 5 years is reduced to 3-4 in the real world. In fairness to Microsoft, 5 years mainstream support has been their standard for quite some time, though software support has usually continued into the extended support period rather than dropping once mainstream support ends. However, 5 years support is better than none at all and being forced to W365 or AVD.

I think as customers we're caught between the waterfall/traditional licensed OS and ~agile/subscription licensed application worlds. I could be wrong, but I get the impression that, while Microsoft dogfoods their own software, they don't dogfood their own licensing and experience the same licensing conundrums their customers face. Perhaps a more continuous upgrade model OS like Azure Stack HCI could resolve the issue in the long run, though that doesn't help much today. 

This is all far too complicated and it is not a typical use case to plan upgrades of RDS hosts each five years excactly. Many software companies don't have their applications ready for the newest OS in the beginning. Thus a migration would be happen 1 or 2 years after release and so the remaining run time would only be 3-4 years for the hosts. Usually you don't use Office on RDS hosts only, so upgrades/migrations are a lot of work as well and such a short support period of M365 Apps or even Office 2021 LTSC is more than questionable.

10 years of support were great, even 7 would be still fine but 5 or even shorter with M365 is really a mess. It is just a campaign to give RDS up, capitulate and book Azure virtual desktops for even more money.

The only thing who could stop this develpoment are antitrust authorities.

greatquux Elden_Christensen Bernd Dausch Note only 2302 or later is supported on Server 2022. The latest Semi-Annual Enterprise Channel release is 2208 and is NOT supported (at this time). The latest Monthly Enterprise Channel (2303) and Current Channel (2304) are supported.

Elden_Christensen Thank you very, very much for your help drawing attention to and getting a sensible resolution to this issue!

Elden_Christensen 

To be sure:
If we understand this statement correctly, does this mean that the next version of Windows Server will also get MS365 support?

Thank you!

Elden_Christensen The strategy is comprehensible for us. M365 has short functional update cycles and the server is in LTSC. Support for M365 on Windows Server in mainstream support is a good compromise. The important thing for us is to get saftey for planning. Is M365 supported on the Vnext server in mainstream support?

Elden_Christensen 

I believe aug 2021 to oct 2025 is 4 years.

I have read something about the new support policy.

But the main point is that a product that had support for 11 years , is now reduced to a product that has 4 years of support.

Inherently means that we the lifetime support and investment in a product has been reduced to 1/3 of what it previously was, and therefor investments are now also 3x as often as before. at the very best investments are 2x more often (and I have to assume at the same price since our CS reseller did sell the new server 2022 at the same high end price as the previous server OS that we had purchased in the past. (not to mention that we did not mention (while he knew) that the support of the microsoft365 apps are now on a lower support cycle.

So same price,  and less support on the microsoft365 apps for essentially the same product.

regards

Leopold