Laggards need to upgrade their PCs faster, officials say

May 18, 2015 09:49 GMT  ·  By

UK government departments are still running Windows XP despite the fact that support for this particular OS version ended in April 2014, and their computers could soon become even more vulnerable because Windows Server 2003 is also set to go dark this July.

But the British govt won’t sign a custom Windows XP support agreement with Microsoft for the second consecutive year, as Whitehall IT leaders believe that, without such a contract, laggards would move faster to a newer operating system.

ComputerWeekly reports that the UK government already proposed a deal, but it didn’t involve the Technology Leaders Network, which devises the technology policy and gives the final go-ahead whenever such deals are considered. This time, they opposed the extension of the custom Windows XP support contract, the source notes, so the government would now have to speed up the transition to another Windows version to make sure they’re secure.

Departments, however, can negotiate their own custom support agreements with Microsoft, and that’s expected to happen in the case of computers running Windows Server 2003 and whose support is scheduled to end soon.

Pricey custom support

It’s no secret that getting custom support from Microsoft is not at all affordable, as Redmond is said to offer patches and security fixes for computers still on Windows XP at $200 (€150) per PC during the first year after end of support. This price is set to double in the second year, and triple after another 12 months.

The British government paid 5.5 million pounds ($8.6 million / €7.5 million) to Microsoft for the first year of custom support for Windows XP, but for the new proposal, the budget was lowered to around 2 million pounds ($3.1 million / €2.7 million).

Even though that might sound like a good investment for Microsoft, it’s not, because the company needs to keep a team of engineers to develop Windows XP patches just for those paying for customer support. The company, however, hopes that more people would switch to Windows 10 when the new OS becomes available, but only time will tell if this plan has any chance to succeed.