Microsoft
officially ended its support for Windows XP last week. More that 25% of the internet connected PCs are still running Windows XP and the vast majority of them are from enterprises and government agencies.
Last we reported that
UK government has signed a deal with Microsoft to provide Windows XP support and security updates across the whole UK public sector for 12 months after regular support for the operating system ends on 8 April. The agreement is worth £5.548m (over $7.6 million), and covers critical and important security updates for Windows XP, Office 2003 and Exchange 2003, all of which have reached end of life in Microsoft’s normal product cycles.
In a similar way, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will be paying Microsoft millions for an extra year of security patches.
“Now we find out that you’ve been struggling to come up with $30 million to finish migrating to Windows 7, even though Microsoft announced in 2008 that it would stop supporting Windows XP past 2014,” Crenshaw said at the hearing. “I know you probably wish you’d already done that.”
According to the IRS, it has approximately 110,000 Windows-powered desktops and notebooks. Of those, 52,000, or about 47%, have been upgraded to Windows 7. The remainder continue to run the aged, now retired, XP.
In an effort to discourage government agencies and others from buying extended support instead of migrating to latest OS, Microsoft has increased the prices for Custom Support. Instead of the standard $200,000 per customer for the first year, Microsoft now negotiates each contract separately.
source:microsoft-news
