Microsoft Corp. is extending support for Windows Server and SQL Server by an additional six years to a total of 16 years.

The new licensing option, “Premium Assurance,” is available for Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 and later editions. Customers will be able to purchase the extended support in early 2017, Microsoft said in a blog post.

“[Premium Assurance] helps you continue to meet compliance requirements and ensure security on systems you aren’t ready to update,” wrote Mark Jewett, Microsoft’s senior director of cloud platform marketing, and Tiffany Wissner, Microsoft’s senior director of data platform marketing.

Premium Assurance should be most welcome by those companies still using the oldest products eligible for the offer – Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2, and SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2 – which will see end of mainstream support in January 2020 and July 2019, respectively. Any company using Windows Server 2008, for example, could get extended support until January 2026 with Microsoft’s new offer.

Premium Assurance means that customers would only receive patches for “Critical” and “Important” vulnerabilities, however.

To tempt enterprises to sign up for Premium Assurance, Microsoft says it’s discounting the price for the first two-and-a-half years of availability. Microsoft spelled out its pricing and discounts in a data sheet, which shows that customers will have to pay 5 percent of their current licensing costs for each year they’re covered, from March to June 2017. From July 2017 to June 2018 companies have to pay 7 percent, rising to 9 percent from June 2018 to July 2019 and to 12 percent from July 2019 on.

“Premium Assurance pricing will start at 5 percent of the current product license cost, and will increase over time (up to 12 percent). Buying before the end of June 2017 means you will save nearly 60 percent on the cost of Premium Assurance,” Microsoft said.

Computerworld suggests that Premium Assurance could be viewed as an alternative to Microsoft’s “Custom Support” program that provides extended support beyond its standard 10-year period. However, it notes there is an important difference between the two, because Premium Assurance doesn’t require any commitment from customers to migrate to a newer version of Microsoft’s software in a specified period of time.