Who wants to live forever?
Rationalisation of the Long Term Servicing Channels at Microsoft has led to the firm chopping the support lifecycle of the next LTSC of Windows 10 in half: from 10 to five years. Enterprises don’t like change and Microsoft has traditionally kept its operating systems going far beyond the expectations of their designers – Windows 7 only recently met its end and, years after Redmond pulled the rug from under it, Windows XP could still be found troubling the odd workstation or kiosk here and there. To reassure companies nervous about the jump to Windows 10, Microsoft unveiled the LTSC version of the operating system. The last, Windows 10 2019 LTSC (based on 2018’s Windows 10 1809, aka the October 2018 Update), was given a little over 10 years of support to January 2029. Those days are now over. The next LTSC release of Windows 10 will occur in the second half of 2021 and switch to a five-year support lifecycle, matching that announced for Office LTSC.
