With both Exchange 2016 and 2019 going out of support in October 2025, we have heard from some of our customers that they have started their migrations to Exchange Subscription Edition (SE) but might need a few extra months of Security Updates (SU) for their Exchange 2016 / 2019 servers while they are finalizing their migrations.
We are announcing that we now have a solution for such customers. Starting on August 1st, 2025, customers can contact their Microsoft account team to get information about and purchase an additional 6-month Extended Security Update (ESU) for their Exchange 2016 / 2019 servers. Your account teams will have information related to per server cost and additional details on how to purchase and receive ESUs, starting August 1st, 2025.
↫ The Exchange Team blog
Microsoft is clearly in a place where a lot of their software released over the past ten years or so just kind of works, and people just don’t feel as strong of a need to upgrade to newer versions, especially not if those newer versions come with complex subscriptions.
It must be a strange position to be in for Microsoft.
There are 2 distinct cases though:
– A new perpetually-licensed version exists but too many people hate it and defer upgrading to it (Windows 11)
– No new perpetually-licensed version exists and the last perpetually-licensed version is about to go out of support (Exchange Server)
The second case is not just a Microsoft thing, Adobe did it first, with people stockpiling copies of Photoshop CS6 because the next version would be Photoshop CC (which is tied to a subscription service). Though for the case of Exchange Server, you can’t stockpile anything, you are expected to be patched against recent vulnerabilities, so subscribe and pay up. Microsoft gave those companies 6 more months, but that’s the end game.
In my opinion it’s actually so painful to upgrade no one wants to do it.
We all know every other version of a Microsoft product sucks.
People like “this works just keep it and sell patches” lol
Again: There is no new perpetually-licensed version to upgrade to when it comes to Exchange Server, and the last perpetually-licensed version is going EOL soon. Also, businesses have to upgrade things like their Exchange Server when the version they run goes EOL, they can’t just run an Exchange Server with years’ worth of vulnerabilities.