Microsoft has offered to defer the Windows 7 Extended Security Updates deadline beyond January 2020, as enterprises grapple to upgrade to newer operating system; the extended support will now culminate to three years of the deadline.

While Windows 7 Extended Security Updates is expected to continue through to January 2023, it will only be available for PCs running Windows 7 Professional/Enterprise edition, and those versions of the operating system obtained through volume licensing deals.

Microsoft presumably bowed to pressure from customers to extend the support, as Windows 7's user share is estimated at a remarkable 34% for January 2020, which leaves it at a little more than a third of all Windows PCs running the aged operating system.

The extended support will culminate in a one-year increments for three years and will not be sold on the per-user approach Microsoft had always pushed out for Windows 10 licensing, rather it will follow a per-device basis.

Albeit, Microsoft has had the related offering tagged "paid supplemental servicing" for Windows 10, which also follows a one-year-and-done paid support plan for Windows 10 updates scrubbed from the company's page.

The scrubbing of the paid supplemental servicing is presumably as a result of Microsoft's extending of support for the fall's feature upgrade to 30 months.

Microsoft will offer customers on Windows Server's Extended Security Updates patches for "Critical" or "Important" rated vulnerabilities, with the top two tiers in its four-step risks ranking system. And the pricing for Windows Server 2008 support may run at 75% of the full annual license cost if the updates are deployed for on-premise servers.