DoD's plan of upgrading 4m PCs to Windows 10 hits a speed bump

Earlier this year, Section of Defence announced that Microsoft's latest Windows x will exist installed on four million machines of the department - inside a year. This aggressive plan was one of a kind as the operating organisation is not only new and in its infancy, but to have it installed on over four million computers in a yr isn't a small feat. 3 months forward and information technology appears that the plan isn't going besides as the DoD had imagined.

DoD'southward plan of upgrading 4 1000000 devices to Windows ten hits a snag

Migrating millions of computers to a new Os in less than a year can plow into a Herculean task if you consider the problems that enterprises come across. Termed as the "largest enterprise deployment," Microsoft had advertised DoD's decision,

One of the largest enterprises anywhere – the US Department of Defense (DoD) – has joined the ranks of enterprise customers planning swift Windows ten deployments.

This announcement was to positively affect the sales of the operating system as no meliorate vote of confidence was to be expected for whatever other business in the world. Turns out, it isn't as swift to upgrade iv million PCs to Windows ten as the DoD had believed. The section had selected Marine Corps to be the starting time to go ahead with the migration, because this group represents the smallest of the Defense services, Federal News Radio has reported. While the plan was to remotely upgrade 60 to 70 per centum of the Marine Corps computers, the number was significantly cut down to only ten per centum. The reason, you inquire? Because the DoD purchases "yesterday'due south technology tomorrow."

Marine Corps CIO, Brig. Gen. Dennis Crall said in a argument,

Our challenges are with hardware, and hardware that is older than a couple years is having more difficulty accepting Windows 10 than hardware that is new. And when yous look at what 'new' ways within DoD,we purchase yesterday'southward applied science tomorrow. A lot of our brand-new systems are having difficulty with the upgrade every bit before long as they come up out of the box, and nosotros didn't anticipate that.

This is apparently non the first time you have heard of a regime agency buying outdated hardware, or even to have been supremely wrong about the migration problems that it could incur during the span of such an aggressive plan. Since the DoD planned to upgrade a large portion of the devices remotely, information technology volition have to come up with another solution equally the "service hasn't budgeted for the manual labor that might exist needed to install Windows 10 on machines that can't exist upgraded remotely."

The Marines are working with the engineers at Microsoft to work around the issues and come upwards with fixes, that may include virtualized desktops and a reduced number of hardware. The department is highly focused on spending resources to make this upgrade happen, primarily because of the security features that Windows x offers.

Nosotros've never had an operating arrangement that's had this much security broiled in from the beginning. We're going to put out some guidance for our employees in general, listing the characteristics of what Windows 10 would give you if you put it on your home system. That's about every bit close to an endorsement as I can get for a software production.

Terry Halvorsen, the electric current CIO of DoD told the Federal News Radiothat there will be "consequences for military machine services that don't comply with the Windows ten mandate."