Last week marked the end of an era, as Windows 7 reached the end of extended support. But as Microsoft has been promising for some time, organizations have the option of purchasing Extended Security Updates (ESUs) for up to three years, and as it turns out, ESUs are going to be quite the money-maker.
According to a report from ZDNet that cites local media, the German government is going to pay at least €800,000 this year to keep 33,000 PCs supported. That works out to just over €24 per device, which is right around what we expected it to cost for Windows Enterprise volume licensing and Microsoft 365 customers. For regular Windows 7 Pro users, the price would be double that.
The price of ESUs doubles every year, so unless the German government moves to Windows 10 this year, it will pay €1.6M next year, and €3.2M the following year. Obviously, it can get pretty pricey. It probably won"t come to that though, since German site Handelsblatt reports that the government started its migration in 2018.
Obviously, Microsoft is going to work out deals with organizations on ESU pricing. That"s why the actual cost isn"t published. If you do need ESUs for your business, you can contact Microsoft.