2025 The Year of “End of Life”
While there is an unusual wide range of software titles scheduled for end of life in 2025 there are also numerous hardware appliances also scheduled for end of life in 2025. Looking back historically we don’t believe this record number of software and hardware instances scheduled for end of life has ever occurred in a single calendar year. It is a good time to perform an internal audit to see if anything in your office is scheduled on the chopping block for next year. I think the last massive purge of computers happened in the late 90’s from wild concerns about Y2K.
Since this topic can travel in numerous directions let just focus on one software company and just a few of their widely used products commonly found in most offices that are scheduled currently for end of life in 2025.
According to several online sources Windows 10 22H2 released in 2022 is the dominate operating system currently in use. If you do not work as a Network Administrator or Network Engineer you might be wondering why that is. Especially when you see Windows 11 in all the stores and installed on most retail products. Windows 11 is commonly known by many Network Admin’s and Professional’s as a Skip OS. Here is a chart to keep things simple, operating systems that have been largely skipped over by larger businesses who might be more prone to carefully selecting what software gets deploy based on several factors but in an effort to quickly summarize let’s say the least problematic. It is critical they deploy and maintain computers as efficiently as possible. The OS’s listed in Bold are the operating systems often referred to by us as Skip OS’s.
| Approximate Release date: 1995 – 1996 | Windows 95 – Windows NT | Approx EOL or End of Support date: Jan 2002 Win NT 2004 |
| Approximate Release date: 1998 | Windows 98 & 2nd edition | July 2006 |
| Approximate Release date: 2000 | Windows 2000 | July 2010 |
| Approximate Release date: 2000 | Windows ME | July 2006 |
| Approximate Release date: 2001 | Windows XP | April 2014 |
| Approximate Release date: 2007 | Windows Vista | April 2017 |
| Approximate Release date: 2009 | Windows 7 | Jan 2020 |
| Approximate Release date: 2012 | Windows 8 | Jan 2016 |
| Approximate Release date: 2013 | Windows 8.1 | Jan 2023 |
| Approximate Release date: 2015 | Windows 10 | The Latest Proposed EOL Date is OCT 2025 |
| Approximate Release date: 2021 | Windows 11 | Oct 2026 |
| Possible release of Oct 2025 | Windows 12 |
It is easy to notice the support or life time on the skip OS’s is shorter than the average, with the exception of Windows 8.1 which we believe gained in popularity as simple solutions were released for its odd start menu behavior and Metro screen. We believe it really was a nice OS aside from those small issues and end user opinions.
Most professionals would think that the end of Windows 10 currently scheduled for Oct 2025 is impossible when we still don’t have copies of Windows 12 released, nothing to work with not even insider releases. Most of the OS’s listed above didn’t start getting deployed by companies like ours and our clients with full time I.T. staffs until a year or so after their official release. We need the time to iron out wrinkles and find work arounds or band-aids that we hope will get addressed soon via the next update. I don’t believe anyone is happy about this timeline and there is little anyone can do except to hope Microsoft releases a new EOL or EOS date for Windows 10 SOON, or move to Extended Support. Possibly by releasing a new Build if they have to. But at this point it is too late, it appears we are too close to the end of life time for an announcement to extend this any further. But as they say but wait there is more!
Now let’s talk about another widely used Microsoft favorite, their Office suite of products. As if the OS problems are not enough to cram in your upcoming 2025 plans lets add Microsoft Office 2016 and 2019 to the list. How about another chart to save some time.
| Approximate Release date: | Office Version: LTSC or not | Approximate EOS date: |
| Sept 2015 | Office 2016 | Oct 2025 |
| Sept 2018 | Office 2019 | Oct 2025 |
| Oct 2021 | Office 2021 | Oct 2026 |
| Oct 2024 | Office 2024 | Oct 2029 |
This one is a bit easier, most anyone regardless of profession is probably wondering what on earth is going on here with these purchase dates versus end of support dates. The first item that should jump out at you is how can something I purchased in 2015 have the same end of support date as software I purchased in 2018? Or how can software I purchased in 2023 have an end of support date just one year from software I purchased in 2015? Wait, is this legal? The answer I believe is sadly yes.
Ah but wait there is more, I believe Microsoft Exchange 2016 and 2019 both are EOS in Oct 2025, this should be fun!
Wrapping up with Microsoft there are many other software titles that will reach End Of Support in 2025 and some could effect currently used software versions by 3rd party companies. Here is a short list of some key titles that End of Support in 2025.
Visual Studio App Center
Windows 10 IoT Enterprise
Windows 11 IoT Enterprise, Version 22H2
Windows 11 Enterprise and Education, Version 22H2
Windows 11 Home and Pro, Version 23H2
Basic Load Balancer
and many Azure titles SDK, API and tools
Unfortunately, there are many working computers that have years of hardware life remaining but don’t meet the requirements for Windows 11 so we can add that to the to-do list for 2025.
We have mainly focused on Microsoft products for this article but we are seeing many companies following this example, sadly too many to list.
This article was intended for the purpose of informing decision makers who might not have a complete picture of the upcoming changes to their company budgets and tasks ahead for the calendar year 2025.