Any company that have not prepared to jump ship to the next supported version (in a *normal* lifecycle, not extended) is doing something wrong. I know, I work for such company. It's a Catch-22 situation... since they don't want to spend cash upgrading systems and hardware, they want to stay with the same systems so they pay extended support. Since extended support costs 2-4x (depending on the *NIX vendor), they are further without cash to afford anything new.... which leads them to want to stay with what they have even more.
In my opinion vendors are right to ask for more money, those engineers supporting 10-year old software must be paid. It's the companies' job to avoid this situation and plan accordingly....
It's a total mistake to plan the life cycle of your services based on extended support plans for the products they are based on. When the regular support lifecycle ends... it's ENDED. Extended support is for mismanaged environment (or something so critical like a nuclear power plant or airport systems.. I doubt many people have those).
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