Queensland Health spends $25.3 million to move to Windows 7

Jun 23, 2016 06:33 GMT  ·  By

There are companies and organizations out there that still struggle to get rid of Windows XP, even though more than two years have passed since Microsoft ended support for this operating system, and Queensland Health in Australia is one very special example in this regard.

The health organization is very close to completing the migration off Windows XP, and while this is clearly a good thing since they work with the personal information of thousands of patients, there’s something a little bit unexpected.

Although they completed the transition from Windows XP in 2016, their computers aren’t upgraded to Windows 10, but to Windows 7, the operating system whose support ends in 3 years and a half. This means that, very soon, they’ll have to start planning another migration process, which will obviously be quite pricey and involve additional costs linked, for instance, to hardware upgrades.

The spending doubled during the upgrade process

For the record, the transition from Windows XP to Windows 7 was originally estimated to cost just $11 million and to complete in September 2015, but the deadline was then extended to mid-2016, and the budget increased to $25.3 million, which is more than double the original estimate.

And although it takes so much time and money to upgrade to Windows 7, not all computers will get rid of Windows XP, Colin McCririck, Chief Executive at eHealth Queensland, Department of Health, told CW.

“The core objective of the program - migration of the workstation fleet off Windows XP - will be largely complete by end June/mid-July 2016, with only a relatively small number of devices remaining on Windows XP. Any remaining devices will be managed separately by operational business units within Queensland Health,” he said.

According to third-party data provided by market analysts at Net Applications, Windows XP is still running on approximately 10 percent of the desktops computers around the world, which makes it the third most-used PC operating system out there.

The risks of staying with Windows XP are obviously quite big, given the fact that no security updates are being released and many vulnerabilities found in the other Windows versions are very likely to exist here too.