The rapidly approaching End of Life for Microsoft Exchange Web Services brings the topic back into the light. For many companies, EOL on critical software or dependencies can throw a major wrench in the works. For others, it’s ignored and remains an awkward source of issues and risk. The solution often exists but competes for attention and resources while the now-defunct software maintains a quiet zombie-like existence in the background.
What does End of Life actually look like?
This depends entirely on the software in question and what the underlying purpose is. In the case of Microsoft EWS, it is likely to actually constitute End of Life; some software which is fundamentally a product can be kept running even once support is officially cut off. This is not the case here.
EWS is the worse case – a prerequisite system. Without it, systems that depended on it will begin to flag. This will impact a multitude of systems but in particular hit email archives and backups.
Archives, backups and data management
Email archives that used EWS will now find themselves at a crossroads. EWS will be replaced by other, newer and more secure options, per Microsoft. But it also means that systems which used to depend on EWS are left to update and use these new alternatives.
If you have an email archive relying on EWS, make sure your provider is going to adjust their solution to accommodate new APIs and connections to Exchange. If the solution does not update promptly, you risk losing archive functionality and potentially also access to already-archived data.
Data migration – the last word in solving EOL issues
Once all other options are exhausted, the one that remains is migration. Data transfer from one source system to another is not a preferred option, but if a critical system is no longer being updated there may be no choice left. The only question is how to achieve the migration quickly, securely and with a minimum of fuss.
TECH-ARROW stands ready to help; as the deadline draws near, our migration tool is capable of extracting data from soon-to-be-defunct solutions and transferring them to a newer, still up-to-date option.
Archive smarter – with TECH-ARROW.
Your Data In Your Hands – With TECH-ARROW
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