And thank God for it! Of course, most enterprises either have licensing arrangements that preclude their continued use of XP in the long term, or have the resources to continue deploying it internally without licensing and activation woes, but last week's announcement by Microsoft that they are extending the availability of Windows XP through June of '08 provides some valuable breathing room to mid-sized and smaller organizations who were otherwise faced with a forced upgrade at what might not be the most advantageous moment.

Of course you're not really forced to upgrade, but if you don't have a bulk license agreement with sufficient licensing to cover growth, and you value a homogeneous network environment for management purposes, some sort of accommodation was going to be in the cards. I think Microsoft was obviously hoping to force some hands in that regard, but given the hue and cry that rose when it first became difficult to procure XP from major vendors on Vista's release (some of that hue and cry being my own) it perhaps was inevitable that they would back away from the precipice and tack on another few months.

I am not sure this means anything long term other than you have some extra time to plan for what still amounts to a forced upgrade, but at least now you have a few extra months to consider if that's really how you want to do business.