News

Microsoft Changes 'Extended Support' Date for Desktop Optimization Pack Tools

• By Kurt Mackie
• 09/04/2019

Most of the tools in the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) now have a common "extended support" date, Microsoft indicated in a Wednesday announcement.

Extended support is the second (and final) phase of Microsoft's business product lifecycle. A product reaching its specified date essentially is a dead one. The software continues to work, but Microsoft stops issuing patches for it, creating potential security issues for organizations.

April 14, 2026 is now designated as the new extended support end date for the following MDOP tools:

• Advanced Group Policy Management, which adds change control over Group Policy Objects.
• Application Virtualization, Microsoft's application virtualization solution.
• Diagnostic and Recovery Toolset, which lets organizations diagnose and repair unbootable machines and create recovery images on portable media.
• Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring, which lets organizations set BitLocker drive encryption policies and access recovery keys.
• User Experience Virtualization, which captures user settings for use with system upgrades.

The April 14, 2026 date apparently is also the end date for all of those tools. MDOP essentially will be a dead suite of products in less than seven years.

There's one exception among the MDOP tools with regard to the extended support date change. That's the Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V) tool, which is used for hosting virtual machines on PCs. MED-V has an extended support date of April 13, 2021, and Microsoft isn't planning to extend it.

MED-V didn't get a reprieve because it depends on technologies that have already fallen out of support, such as Microsoft Virtual PC and Windows XP Service Pack 3, Microsoft explained.

Microsoft first kicked off MDOP 11 years ago on April 1, 2008, according to Wikipedia's reckoning. Organizations need to have Software Assurance coverage to use it, which is an annuity charge that's paid on top of the software licensing cost. The licensing plans that are eligible to use MDOP typically get used by enterprise customers, such as "Windows Enterprise E3/E5," as well as "Microsoft 365 Enterprise E3/E5."

Microsoft still plans to integrate Microsoft BitLocker Administration and Monitoring capabilities into its Microsoft Intune and System Center Configuration Manager management products, as Microsoft had described back in May. The integration is supposed to happen sometime this year, but there was no update on the timing.