About 20 million businesses will face a major security risk in the next 221 days that could leave their IT systems wide open to vulnerabilities and threats from cyberattackers.

That’s the assessment of Dell Inc. anyway, which this week took the opportunity to warn businesses that Microsoft will be ending support for its Windows Server 2003 operating system in July 2015. Once that date has passed, Microsoft will no longer be able to patch the software against newly discovered vulnerabilities, which means that anyone still running it faces a much higher risk of having their systems compromised.

221 days might seem like a lot of time, but it isn’t, said Michael Tweedle, Dell’s executive director of Windows management. Migrating to an alternative system such as Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2012 can be a hugely complex task – arguably even more challenging than upgrading from the now unsupported Windows XP on PCs – and will likely take several months of planning to ensure everything goes smoothly.

The biggest challenge for many organizations won’t be upgrading the server software, but rather tha applications that run on those servers. The main problem with Windows 2003 is it’s a 32-bit OS, whereas newer operating systems run 64-bit environments. This could mean compatibility problems with older, homegrown applications that will need to be updated too, although both Microsoft and Dell are helpfully providing tools for organizations to check what needs to be done.

Organizations might see migration as a major headache, but doing so will also bring lots of benefits. As Tweedle points out, Windows Server 2003 was designed for yesterday’s IT infrastructure, and many aspects of it are now out of date. The most tantalizing prospect for many organizations is Windows Server 2012 makes it far easier for them to shift workloads to the cloud as it provides specific connection points to Azure and Office365. Other benefits include compatibility with some of Microsoft’s newer technologies, such as its Hyper-V hypervisor and Lync communications software.

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