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Microsoft Reminds Users Office 2010 End of Support Is Coming

Microsoft will end Support for Office 2010 on October 13, 2020. It’s now time to think hard about your next steps and put together an upgrade plan to a newer version, like Office 365 Pro+ or Office 365. Research indicates that most environments that are still using Office 2010 have bought just the Office 2010 license and do not have any upgrade rights though Software Assurance. This means an upgrade of the Office environment will likely be a considerable cost in the IT budget. Possibly for both software and hardware.

Source: SoftwareReviews Application Lifecycle Management, March 12, 2020

What Does End of Support Mean?

Over the lifecycle of a product, typically ten years, Microsoft will provide security updates, bug fixes, and patches. With the End of Support (EOS) these patches will no longer be provided and thus become a large target for hackers trolling for these vulnerable environments. When Office 2010 reaches EOS, Microsoft will no longer provide:

• Technical support for issues
• Security fixes and patches for vulnerabilities that are discovered
• Bug fixes that might be discovered

Given Microsoft’s push to the cloud and Office365, it is highly likely to offer Extended Support to customers as with Windows 7. In fact, to date, it has not announced anything.

What Are My Options?

There a few options whether you have Software Assurance coverage or not. You can upgrade to a newer version such as Office 2019 or Office 365 ProPlus.

Office 2019 is sold as a one-time purchase for one computer and available through various licensing programs.

Office 365 ProPlus is a subscription version of Office that is in most Office 365 plans and available through several licensing programs.

A key difference between Office 365 ProPlus and Office 2019 is that Office 365 ProPlus is updated on a regular basis, as often as monthly, with new features. Office 2019 only has the same features that it had when it was released in October 2018.

Whatever option you choose, you will have to re-buy or subscribe to the new Office version and this will cost anywhere between $240-$450 per computer or user for an enterprise edition.

Recommendations

• Review and understand the technical differences with Office 365 and Office 2019.
• Review the system requirements for Office 365 ProPlus.
• Consider the value and savings of Office 365.
• Assess application compatibility.
• Assess your infrastructure and environment.
• Choose how you want to deploy your next Office edition.

Bottom Line

Continued use of older software in your environment can expose the organization to unnecessary risk, compatibility issues with newer technologies, and stagnated productivity for Office 2010 users. It is recommended that you start now to prepare for Office 2010 EOS and leverage your upgrade options ASAP. Give strong consideration to Office 365: it’s a lot easier to upgrade to, it’s the least expensive option, and you can leverage Microsoft help through its FastTrack Center.