Microsoft says its deal with a banking consortium to continue to provide security hot fixes once it ends NT 4.0 support is par for the course.
On Monday morning, it looked as if Microsoft had done yet another about-face by extending NT 4.0 support past the rapidly approaching support-cut-off deadlines — despite repeated claims that it had no intentions of doing so. But by Monday evening, Microsoft was working overtime to correct any misunderstandings caused byits vaguely worded press release about its plans for continuing to offer NT 4.0 fixes beyond the currently stated cut-off period.
Microsoft announced on Monday that it had cemented a deal with the BITS nonprofit banking consortium to continue to "provide financial institutions and other (NT 4.0) customers with security updates for an extended period during which they will migrate their systems to more recent versions of Windows." But the Redmond software vendor didn"t specify how this would effect the support cut-off dates, nor whether the deal covered both NT 4.0 Workstation and Server. By end of day Monday, the company attempted to clarify its NT 4.0 support plans by adding a statement to its original press release: