With just a couple of weeks to go now until much of the legal world settles into the Christmas and New Year holiday break, this might not be the most appropriate time to remind readers that along with the old year, the Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 system also dies when Big Ben chimes midnight on Friday 31 December.

Servers are one of those dull but crucial backroom technologies that keep most law firms’ IT systems running and, in its heyday, NT Server was one of the most widely used servers around. But this 1996-vintage system has been officially ‘end-of-lifed’ by Microsoft. This means users were given notice about two years ago that the system was effectively obsolete and that there would be no more upgrades or support available after December 2003. As a concession, another 12 months of security update support was offered throughout 2004 to cover such things as new viruses, but that now expires at the end of this month.


Charles Christian: servers are one of those dull but crucial backroom technologies

So, should you worry? If your IT department or IT supplier is awake, they will have been nagging you about the need to replace NT for at least 18 months and will probably have already done so. If you are actually still in the middle of upgrading from NT to a replacement system, such as Windows Server 2003, again there is no need to worry as you can obtain two further years of limited security update support (until December 2006) through a special custom support agreement – however, these agreements must be requested before 31 March 2005.

But what about those of you who are happy with your current systems and see no obvious reason to go to the expense of an upgrade?


Good news here too, as just because a product has been end-of-lifed does not mean it stops working – both hardware and software will run more or less indefinitely. There was a competition in London earlier this autumn to find the oldest PC in regular use – the winner was a local government agency still using a 1983 vintage IBM XT PC on a daily basis. (I would be interested in hearing from any law firms who think they can equal this.)


The one drawback is all the new software being sold today is designed to take advantage of the latest hardware, so you will find that if a new application comes along that you want to use, you will be unable to run it on your old PCs and NT servers. But, if you can live with that limitation – and there are plenty of smaller law firms happily using old technologies such as DOS – then save your money until you really do have to change.


One final point: ‘end-of-lifing’ is not something unique to Windows NT. It applies to not only all Microsoft’s products but also just about every other software program, including many of the specialist legal systems you run. So do check out the small print of your maintenance contracts with suppliers for what are effectively built-in obsolescence provisions – particularly as many of them will be wanting to move you on to their new Microsoft .NET systems over the next couple of years. Full details of Microsoft’s support lifecycle policy can be found on the Web at: http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle.


Charles Christian is an independent adviser to the Law Society’s Software Solutions guide