Microsoft bowed to the reality that enterprises won’t purge Windows 7 by its January 2020 retirement, and has announced it will sell extended support for three years past that deadline.

Called “Windows 7 Extended Security Updates” (ESU), the after-drop-dead deal will add support through January 2023, according to Microsoft. The news was part of a larger announcement Thursday by Jared Spataro, the executive who leads marketing for Office and Windows. “While many of you are already well on your way in deploying Windows 10, we understand that everyone is at a different point in the upgrade process,” Spataro said in explaining the offer.

Left unsaid was the general status of Windows 7-to-Windows 10 migrations by commercial customers. The Windows 7 ESU was almost certainly a response to customers telling Microsoft that they would not make the Jan. 14, 2020,

https://www.itnews.com/article/3304309/microsoft-windows/microsoft-plans-to-sell-post-2020-support-for-windows-7.htmldeadline, or at least a realization by the company that, for all its aggressive efforts to push aside the older OS, enterprises w