After investigating and analyzing the deployment state of an extensive number of Exchange customers we have decided to move the end of Extended Support for Exchange Server 2010 from January 14th 2020 to October 13th 2020.

Our commitment to meeting the evolving needs of our customers is as strong as ever, and we recognize discontinuing support for a product that has been as popular and reliable as Exchange Server 2010 can be an adjustment. We also know that some of you are in the midst of upgrades to a newer version of Exchange Server on-premises, or more transformative migrations to the cloud with Office 365 and Exchange Online. With this in mind, we are extending end of support to October 13th 2020 to give Exchange Server 2010 customers more time to complete their migrations. This extension also aligns with the end of support for Office 2010 and SharePoint Server 2010.

After October 13th 2020, Microsoft will no longer provide technical support for problems that may occur including: bug fixes for issues that are discovered and that may impact the stability and usability of the server, security fixes for vulnerabilities that are discovered and that may make the server vulnerable to security breaches, and time zone updates. Your installation of Exchange 2010 will, of course, continue to run after this date; however, due to the changes and potential end of support risks, we strongly recommend you migrate from Exchange 2010 as soon as possible.

As a reminder, if Exchange Server 2010 is running on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2, it's important to consider how you will obtain security updates for the underlying operating system too. Please read more about your options here.

Please know that we can help. If you have a complex deployment, or if you simply don’t have the time or resources to dedicate to a project like this, there are plenty of ways to get help.

Firstly, if you are migrating to Office 365 and Exchange Online, you may be eligible to use the free Microsoft FastTrack service. FastTrack provides best practices, tools, and resources to make migration to Office 365 and Exchange Online as seamless as possible. Best of all, you have access to a support engineer that will walk you through your migration, from planning and design all the way to migrating the last mailbox.

Secondly, if you run into any problems during your migration to Office 365 and you are not eligible for FastTrack, or if you are migrating to a newer version of Exchange Server, Microsoft can still help. Try Microsoft support or the Exchange Technical Community.

Thirdly, you also might choose to engage a partner to help you. We have a great number of partners with deep skills in Exchange, and we’re sure one of them will be able to help you. You can browse a list of Exchange partners at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/solution-providers/home to find one in your location or that has skills in your industry.

Clearly, we think moving to Exchange Online and Office 365 is a good idea. We really do believe that’s where you’ll get access to the most secure and productive software with the lowest TCO. But over and above all of that, it gets you out of the upgrade business. If you migrate fully to Office 365 you really don’t need to worry about ‘big bang’ version upgrades any more. You just have to keep a much smaller number of on-premises servers up to date, and you’re good.

If you do want to stay on-premises don’t forget that you cannot upgrade directly from Exchange 2010 on-premises to Exchange Server 2019. You can upgrade to Exchange 2013 or 2016 directly from Exchange 2010 and we recommend you upgrade to Exchange 2016 if you have the choice.

Greg Taylor

Director of Product Marketing - Exchange Server/Online