Government pays Microsoft £5.5m to extend Windows XP support

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/1074...

Ugh.

What would you prefer? To pay for extended support or pay for a large number of new PCs? There are a vast number of XP machines in all sectors and upgrading them with some specialised application that they run could cost significantly more. Yes, they will be updated, but in a timely fashion.

Several of the companies I deal with still have systems that run Win3.11 and Win NT - the equipment is from one source and support is still provided for those. The total cost to the end users of an upgrade would be measured in hundreds of millions of dollars whereas the support is probably around $1m.

I would have preferred them to migrate to a newer version of Windows long before now. It's not like Microsoft sprung the XP EOL date on everyone 6 months ago, we've known about this for years.

It isn't always that easy. There is lots of business software out there that still hasn't been changed to support later versions. Or, the company no longer supplies the software but as it does what is needed the alternative could be to spend thousands on something to replace it.

The knock on effect on back end servers and software contracts can be enormous and can take years to get everything sorted. This is especially the case in some areas of government due to the vast array of different services provided there are a lot of different systems (and those systems may also talk to each other so changing one could break another).

The planning behind this is enormous - and also very expensive at a time when most government bodies are having to cut back. And those costs mean that politicians generally won't want to be seen diverting money to upgrading PCs from delivering front line services.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Several of the companies I deal with still have systems that run Win3.11

Hmmm... - must be a hell of a company

I just read the article. Quite staggering (incompetence?).

(Edit - re governmental systems).

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 04-Apr-14 13:27:41)

The system is stable, it has no connections to the outside world - apart from CDs. If you had a choice of spending $50m to update the works adequately and still has many years of life or spend an extra $100k per annum for 10 years for additional support - what would you do?

The company that provided the original platform is large and could provide a full hardware update - not an issue, but cost is.

$1m at $200 non-discounted per machine = 5000 machines.

$200m, (the lowest possible value for "hundreds of millions of dollars") = $40,000 per replacement. (Kit plus labour/conversion/testing).

Hmmm.

It does seem that with seven years notice they could have upgraded before now. I don't think the argument about keeping old systems running holds water. Surely even Government departments write off computer equipment in less than seven years.

I don't think the argument about keeping old systems running holds water. Surely even Government departments write off computer equipment in less than seven years.

It's not the computer but often the (very) specialist (and expensive) and often bespoke software it's running and the (often very expensive equipment) to which it is connected. That is certainly the case in some hospitals. The problem in many cases is that the authors of the software either refuse or cannot update it or have moved on to other areas.