Government pays MS to keep XP going for another year

[edutech4schools]

Sorry if this has already been posted,

 

Apparently this covers schools also.

 

Government signs £5.5m Microsoft deal to extend Windows XP support

 

Government pays Microsoft £5.5m to extend Windows XP support - Telegraph

Edited April 3, 2014 by edutech4schools

[fiza]

How do schools get these updates after April 8th?

[synaesthesia]

Wow.

 

I think my words are "Stop wasting money on Microsoft, spend it getting schools up to scratch in the first place"

Why on earth are they fighting fires rather than fixing the root causes? Ridiculous.

[PotNoodleTech]

It's nothing to do with schools really, I bet the vast majority of us are on Win7 now. It's more internal govt departments and the NHS for which upgrading windows will be a ginormous(ly expensive) job with lots of planning required. We all know the govt’s track record on planning large scale IT projects!! It’s easier for them to bury their head in the sand and pay MS through the nose. I guarantee this will not be a one year deal – they’ll keep paying MS for at least the next 3 years, probably 5.

[Oaktech]

Yeah, how do we access this... I have to cope with XP for another 6 months!

[fiza]

I still have student laptops on XP - mainly because they wont run Win7 and we cant afford to replace them.

[hardtailstar]

I still have student laptops on XP - mainly because they wont run Win7 and we cant afford to replace them.

 

likewise, so if we can be supported for longer until we have funds then I'm happy

[Michael]

Well whoever runs these systems should be sacked... this has been in the public domain for years now and now they're going to rush through upgrades in 12 months. Brilliant plan!

[synaesthesia]

Exactly this. As our current desktop wallpaper states "Fail to Prepare, Prepare to Fail"

 

Perhaps they should fire a few million in the direction of someone like Capita to sort out systems for the NHS an.... oh, right.

[free780]

If the government can afford XP support they need to spend the money on moving to 7/8.1 . @fiza You can do it but its $200 per pc and you must have a migration plan in place. I think you also need a enterprise agreement.

[Mr.Ben]

Almost all of this down to the Management and Network Managers - This has been known about for half a decade. Machines that don't run 7 should have been replaced, and the NM equivalents should have been advising senior management on replacement schedules. Finance isn't there? Well we will have to reduce our machine count.

 

No excuses for it really, and efficient planning with adequate funding saves money in the longer term (not just in capital purchase, but in productivity time as well).

[Oaktech]

Well whoever runs these systems should be sacked... this has been in the public domain for years now and now they're going to rush through upgrades in 12 months. Brilliant plan!

 

In services with a budget, then I agree with you, but there are a lot of people whose hands are tied by senior management. I was in discussions with people to make the switch 2 years ago, but I've been constantly told that there wasn't the necessity/money to do anything.

 

I've just (as in last 4 hours) been told that I can now submit nearly 90k of purchase order for 3 new servers, 24tb of EMC san, consulting and migration. then in a few weeks time I can sign off on 50k of new PCs and 20k of infrastructure upgrades.

 

I 'blame' the media coverage of the demise of XP for the change of heart.

[jmak]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/12/nhs_microsoft_win_xp_extended_support/

 

#########################

 

Fees for this special protection start at $200 per desktop for the first year, going up to $400 in the second and $800 in the third year.

 

Only 1 million PCs to worry about... and that's JUST the NHS

 

The NHS in England alone has 1.086 million PCs and laptops running Windows XP at trusts, GPs and other health groups. The National Health Service in Scotland will be contending with 3,603.

 

###############################

 

I think that a lot of the problems are being caused by custom built applications that aren't compatible with Win 7. Still no excuse...

[fiza]

Almost all of this down to the Management and Network Managers - This has been known about for half a decade. Machines that don't run 7 should have been replaced, and the NM equivalents should have been advising senior management on replacement schedules. Finance isn't there? Well we will have to reduce our machine count.

 

No excuses for it really, and efficient planning with adequate funding saves money in the longer term (not just in capital purchase, but in productivity time as well).

 

In my defence - I only joined the school 18 months ago. No NM in place before that ever! For the last 18 months have said we need to replace and upgrade. Did all the desktop upgrades to 7 but no money for renewing laptops (as current ones wont run 7) but we cant do without the laptops so hence we are stuck on XP until money becomes available.

[Michael]

In services with a budget, then I agree with you, but there are a lot of people whose hands are tied by senior management. I was in discussions with people to make the switch 2 years ago, but I've been constantly told that there wasn't the necessity/money to do anything.

 

I've just (as in last 4 hours) been told that I can now submit nearly 90k of purchase order for 3 new servers, 24tb of EMC san, consulting and migration. then in a few weeks time I can sign off on 50k of new PCs and 20k of infrastructure upgrades.

 

I 'blame' the media coverage of the demise of XP for the change of heart.

 

I'd also agree what you said in principle, but the EOL has been published by Microsoft for over 5 years. Realistically, it just isn't going to be possible to migrate the remaining 85% of the NHS in 12 months without spending more money buying in additional people and expertise.

[hardtailstar]

Our school, has no money,

 

We had to beg, borrow and steal to get money for a new server!

 

Our main office and staff laptops all run Win 7 as the equipment could run it but our classroom laptops cannot.

[rich_tech]

Well whoever runs these systems should be sacked... this has been in the public domain for years now and now they're going to rush through upgrades in 12 months. Brilliant plan!

 

I agree that it is something that should be adequately planned, though I expect with government theres little homogenisation of the process or departments, everyone goes it alone ill wager.

 

We had the planning down at our school and testing, though its not a straightforward process upgrading, though it was a bit of a revolutioniser as well with 7, even though they do stuff fairly differently which we found out as a school when we went 7, there was a knock on effect that we had to spend further money to upgrade some older software to make it compatible (Sibelius and SuccessMaker were two major products that had to be upgraded).

 

I cant imagine doing it on a country wide level.

[Mr.Ben]

In my defence - I only joined the school 18 months ago. No NM in place before that ever! For the last 18 months have said we need to replace and upgrade. Did all the desktop upgrades to 7 but no money for renewing laptops (as current ones wont run 7) but we cant do without the laptops so hence we are stuck on XP until money becomes available.

@fiza - sounds like you've been dropped in it :-0. I'm sure you are up to the task of preventing it happening again!

[seawolf]

In my defence - I only joined the school 18 months ago. No NM in place before that ever! For the last 18 months have said we need to replace and upgrade. Did all the desktop upgrades to 7 but no money for renewing laptops (as current ones wont run 7) but we cant do without the laptops so hence we are stuck on XP until money becomes available.

 

Inform management that because of the security risks of running Windows XP on these laptops after the 8th of April that you will need to install Ubuntu on them until they can be replaced. Make them aware of the problems this may cause in accessing some service or the learning curve that may be required for students, etc. It may turn out some money magically appears; or, at least you don't have a zero day threat waiting to blow up in your face (which it probably will because XP is going to be the big malware target now since it will be a sitting duck with a large swath of machines still using it).

 

Unless you can access these updates the govt is paying MS for. If you can do that, then you have some time.

[SPFLDHSTech]

How do schools get these updates after April 8th?

This is the only useful comment on the entire post. I wish there was an answer.

[localzuk]

This page will help you - Custom Support | Crown Commercial Service

[synaesthesia]

So in a nutshell, unless you have an expensive contract which is likely more than windows 7 licenses (a guess!)...... fill in the rest.

 

At this particular moment in time I would not allow any machine running XP to connect to the internet if it also accesses mission critical data. MIS and soforth. I can't see an excuse for not planning for that.

Edited April 10, 2014 by synaesthesia

[Dos_Box]

IIRC, when NT4.0 bit the dust there were still a LOT of govts and companies who paid Microsoft for support after mainstream support ended.

If you have specialist software and hardware it is often eityher very hard, or in sopme cases impossible to run a new OS on these. How many here have CNC machines or other older hardware being driven by a legacy Microsoft OS?

We had a CD duplicator way back whoes manufacturer basically turned around and said that if we wanted it to work beyond XP (this was after Vista hit the shelves) we should look at buying a newer duplicator.

Whilst there is nothing wrong with needing paid for support for special purposes, needing it for plain old office desktops is very bad planning.

[matt40k]

Can't decide if we're saying some schools might have financial planning problem (ironic I know), or they are just plan hoarding - ie they aren't throwing away computers when they replace them so their estate is larger then what it should be\can afford to maintain.

 

Has anyone actually got at the updates yet out of interest? Doesn't seem to be well planned to say the least.

[localzuk]

It says you don't need a Premier support contract if you have less than 250 devices running XP. That will be the majority of schools - as there are more small schools than large.

 

Can't decide if we're saying some schools might have financial planning problem (ironic I know), or they are just plan hoarding - ie they aren't throwing away computers when they replace them so their estate is larger then what it should be\can afford to maintain..

 

The latter of those 2 options is pretty common. Here for example, I have not disposed of a working machine in all my time here. I have instead turned them into thin clients.

Edited April 10, 2014 by localzuk