Businesses will be able to buy extra years of support for Windows 7

Windows 7 is turning into another XP as Microsoft confirmed it will be offering an extended support option for this aging operating system. New security updates for Windows 7 will stop on January 14, 2020, but businesses with a lot of Windows 7 machines will be able to buy up to three years of extended support.

The software giant details the new policy in a blog post:

With that in mind, today we are announcing that we will offer paid Windows 7 Extended Security Updates (ESU) through January 2023. The Windows 7 ESU will be sold on a per-device basis and the price will increase each year. Windows 7 ESUs will be available to all Windows 7 Professional and Windows 7 Enterprise customers in Volume Licensing, with a discount to customers with Windows software assurance, Windows 10 Enterprise or Windows 10 Education subscriptions. In addition, Office 365 ProPlus will be supported on devices with active Windows 7 Extended Security Updates (ESU) through January 2023. This means that customers who purchase the Windows 7 ESU will be able to continue to run Office 365 ProPlus.

Details about the extended support aren't available. ZD Net reports that in case of the similar plan for Windows XP, clients needed to provide quarterly deployment milestones and a project completion date. The extended patch coverage for XP had a price tag in the "millions of dollars" range, and became more expensive over time.