What End-of-life for Microsoft’s SQL Server 2008 R2 Means For You and Your Office/Business

July 9th, 2019 marked the end-of-life for Microsoft’s SQL Server 2008 R2. What does this mean for your office/business and how does this affect you? Read more to find out:

a. End-of-life means that Microsoft will no longer offer security patches for that version.
b. SQL Server 2008 R2 will continue to function beyond July 9th.
c. The significance to a medical practice of the end-of-life for any Microsoft product is the concern over HIPAA compliance. With no more security patches, new security vulnerabilities that are discovered potentially create an added risk of a data breach.
d. Over time, the Medical Suite has migrated to newer products to ensure it keeps up with security standards, using Sybase prior to 2005, Microsoft SQL Server 2005, SQL Server 2008, SQL Sever 2008 R2, and currently SQL Server 2016.
e. The Medical Suite will remain compatible with SQL Server 2008 R2 for some time, and automatically upgrades to SQL Server 2016 for most clients that are running the Express Edition. But if your practice has not yet made the transition to SQL Server 2016, or if you do not know if you have, contact STI Software Support at your earliest convenience. STI has multiple options available ranging from the free upgrade to SQL Server 2016 Express Edition, assistance with an upgrade to SQL Server 2016 Standard Edition, hosting your Medical Suite in the certified secure ChartMaker Cloud environment, or even the ChartMaker RCM option.
f. The next Microsoft products to reach end-of-life include
i. Early versions of Window 10 (version 1803 on November 2019), and
ii. Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2 (January 2020).