SQL Server 2005 reaches its end-of-life milestone on April 12, the day on which Microsoft ceases support for the database. While most public-sector organizations have already migrated critical systems to newer versions of SQL Server, some siloed departments have yet to migrate less critical workloads running on long-forgotten legacy servers.

While it may be tempting to ignore such systems and continue to run SQL Server 2005 indefinitely, the lack of security updates from Microsoft will make the software significantly more vulnerable to breaches. According to the Ponemon Institute’s 2015 Cost of Data Breach Study, the average cost of a data breach in which sensitive data is compromised is $154 per record, with an average incident cost of $3.8 million. The cost of even a small breach could easily exceed the cost of upgrading to SQL Server 2014.

Here are some tips for upgrading SQL Server licensing.

SOURCE: statetechmagazine.com