What is the Support Lifecycle for products or companies that Microsoft acquires?
Products that were released before the acquisition date may not be covered under the Support Lifecycle policy and may not be supported. In these cases, support will be subject to the terms of the individual acquisition. Microsoft will publish the end of support dates for each acquisition product on the Support Lifecycle Web site, where applicable. For these listings, the “General Availability Date” is the acquisition date and the “Mainstream Support Retired” is the end of support date for the acquired product. Generally, the Microsoft Support Lifecycle policy applies to new software releases that are released under a Microsoft brand, following the acquisition.
