The plug has been pulled by Microsoft on Windows Server 2003 more than two months ago but millions of businesses are still running the risk with a system that offers no extended support, no automatic updates, no security fixes and no help from the middle-aged software giant.  Are you confident your business is protected from such an elevated risk of cybersecurity dangers such as viruses, malware and spam emails?

According to Netcraft’s July 2015 Web Server Survey, there are 600,000 web facing computers – which host more than a staggering 175 million websites – that are still running Windows Server 2003, a 12 year old operating system.

For businesses, the lack of extended support can spell disaster for mission-critical data stored on company systems and will ultimately cost companies on the bottom line.  Security fixes are one of the most critical fixes for your servers and these are now no longer delivered to Windows Server 2003 system users. Customers can no longer contact Microsoft for help if there is a problem with a server or an outage.

Then there is the issue with 12 year old applications which fail to run properly and are past their support life.  And for companies in a regulated industry such as the payment card industry or healthcare they are now no longer in compliance – so beware of fines or being cut off from trading partners.

Think about how far we have come since 2003.  Smartphones and mobile apps were only just being adopted.  But now in 2015 we have smartphones that are more powerful than the original Microsoft Server 2003 memory and processor requirements.

With Windows Server 2003 support now relegated into the technological wasteland, isn’t it about time you modernised your business by moving to Windows Server 2012 R2.