I'd agree that that's what the email implies (form not withstanding). We heard about it through a forwarded email that we got about a week before the IT Exchange email, and when we tried to clarify that (I think it was through the IT helpdesk, but I wasn't the one that was doing that), found that even *they* didn't know about it at the time (and seemed to have problems receiving forwarded copies of the email). Quite frankly, given the relatively tight deadlines, that extra week of time it took to get "official" notice of it is pretty significant.
(On a personal note, I have to admit I find it somewhat annoying to get blindsided by this when just a few weeks ago at the security summit the word was that there were no plans on cutting XP off from the internet. That's a pretty strong about-face to go to a deadline that's about 2.5 months from when "official" notice goes out. Yes, I recognize that XP is something of a ticking time bomb (although as someone else mentioned, I'm not convinced that things like OSX 10.5 and 10.6 aren't issues too). That Feb 1st deadline is feeling a bit on the overwhelming side at the moment as I contemplate the number of machines we need to deal with.)