US DoD signs $617 million Windows 8 licensing deal

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2013/Jan13/01-04DoDPR.aspx

by 6thSigma • 14 years ago

32 48 14 years ago

asdfs• 14 years ago

Was the DoD primarily using Windows XP up to this point? It would make sense for them to move to 8 if that was the case, given the longer support lifetime.

Jtsummers• 14 years ago

Windows 7 for most, XP for some groups and specific applications.

rdtsc3• 14 years ago

Windows 7 is the most common. Some XP, but few Vista ones.

mtgx2• 14 years ago

Is the majority of the DoD employees going to use touchscreen computers? If not, the Metro interface will just get in their way, and they'll need some retraining, too. If anything they should've gone with Windows 7. I think it's supported at least until 2020 (and if Windows 8/9 doesn't catch off, probably longer).

Also, the deal makes it to about $2,000 per user per 3 years. Isn't that...expensive? How much would the taxpayers have saved if they had gone Linux?

cms07• 14 years ago

Apparently, 617 million dollars.

neurotech13• 14 years ago

I agree with your point about Metro. $617m probably includes a support contract, Windows Server, and MS SharePoint Enterprise licenses.

wrath• 14 years ago

Unfortunately there's no support organization big enough to implement Linux in the dod. I would think that only Microsoft has the experience to support such customers with endless use cases.

cdrxndr• 14 years ago

IBM? 400k employees and they kinda know their *nix.

briandear• 14 years ago

The classified systems will still use Linux, luckily.

seivan• 14 years ago

Yeah, would have been fun to see NSA to operate under Windows. ;-)

taftster• 14 years ago

Um, you might want to check out that National Geographic video on the NSA... You'll see a few Linux screenshots, but most of the screens are Windows. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Quq67h8j_OY

Now as to their backend systems, who knows.

dfc2• 14 years ago

You think that all classified work is done with linux? As a 10+ year debian user I wish that was the case.

peripetylabs2• 14 years ago

You would think these folks could write their own OS for that kind of money.

mitchi2• 14 years ago

Do you have an idea of how much an IT project costs a Government? The firearm registry in Canada, a country much smaller than the US and with a lot less firearms, costs 66M a year http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Firearms_Registry

I don't see where the big deal is. MS is an American company that employs a lot of people. That money will come back to the government in taxes and spending someday.

mtgx2• 14 years ago

That sounds incredibly expensive. I think these companies just price software that way because they don't get a lot of contracts through out the year, if they make only custom software for governments, and they need to make every license very expensive to survive. Then the government pays up, because what the hell - it's not really their money.

So I don't think the prices these companies are asking from governments is in any way related to development time of the software, or even with maintenance time. I think it's mostly based on how much the government is willing to pay.

And I disagree with your last remark, too. By that logic the government can just spend it on anything and as much as they want. They need to be efficient with the money, to be able to make or sustain multiple projects at once. Otherwise they'll have to raise taxes, fire people from other programs, or they wouldn't start new needed projects.

eupharis• 14 years ago

Or hell: pay a team of 6,170 developers $100,000 for a year to make all their apps run beautifully under WINE and/or port the source to Linux outright.

neurotech13• 14 years ago

I think its a good idea, except there is some ass-backwards rules to stop this; OMB Circular A-130. The Senate also added to the NDAA 2013 to ensure a "less expensive" commercial software is used.

"The bill indicates that Accumulo may violate OMB Circular A-130, a government policy that bars agencies from building software if it’s less expensive to use commercial software that’s already available. And according to one congressional staffer who worked on the bill, this is indeed the case. He asked that his name not be used in this story, as he’s not authorized to speak with the press." http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/07/nsa-accumulo-go...

peripetylabs2• 14 years ago

Ah, why am I still surprised... When you can't compete on technical merit, legislate away the competition!

dkhenry6• 14 years ago

It is rare that an entity can't write requirements in such a way that no "Commercial Software" full fills them. However in most cases it is cheaper to use COTS software for almost everything. There are very few places in the DoD that have the core competency of writing software. Even in corporate environments how many places write their own software? Most bring in vendors for everything.

malkia2• 14 years ago

Dear DoD, if you are missing the Start Button, please consider installing Classic Shell - http://classicshell.sourceforge.net :)

malkia2• 14 years ago

And this, after Biden said that he wants to cut $20B from the DoD spending... Really wouldn't be cheaper with something else? Maybe I'm missing something, but a Windows OS by itself takes probably couple to dozen GB, and if this is installed on a tablet device, or even on SSD laptop - this takes significant amount of space (probably to solve SxS issues (dll side-by side versions) which also grows quite big with newer updates).

And then you would have to instruct your personnel to learn two interfaces - Metro, or who knows how it's called, and the old one.

And for that all monitors better be touch-capable, otherwise - what's the point of Windows 8?

I simply don't get it... Me & My wife are both using OSX, and we are happy, and while I understand that this is probably more expensive (or maybe... not) - there is completely free OS alternatives - not one, but at least couple decent.

If a big portion of the internet is built behind free OS, I don't see why DoD can't go with that option too.

kvb• 14 years ago

Perhaps running their existing applications is a consideration? Or retraining costs? There are plenty of reasons that the total cost of ownership might be lower with Windows.

greghinch• 14 years ago

Agreed, retraining and existing software costs probably make this transition not as overall expensive as it sounds. Now that being said, it would be nice to know that part of the ongoing cost-cutting would be switching specific groups to open source over time so that retraining and existing software becomes a non-issue

_wp3r• 14 years ago

This is the reason for OS lock in the DOD. Billions upon billions of custom MS software exist in the DOD ecosystem. Cost of migration would be prohibitive.

Second issue would be forest management. I am not sure which free or paid nonMS solution would replace the AD/exchange integration and the many other tools required to run a worldwide domain/forest with 2.5+ million machines.

madoublet• 14 years ago

I think the big advantage Windows has in large organizations is that it is secure and it supports Exchange and Active Directory. So, it might be prohibitively more expensive to switch the infrastructure. Plus, most people are familiar with Windows and Windows 8 really is not that much different.

eande• 14 years ago

And the city of Munich, which is small compared to DoD users saved $17Mill by switching all their users over to Linux.

dfc2• 14 years ago

The city of Munich and DoD have so little in common that I do not understand how you could possibly think this was relevant.

snarkyturtle• 14 years ago

Iirc, Windows 8 has a lot of optimization/improvements going on behind the Metro UI so it's a sound investment to keep their systems future-proof. Everyone's bitching about Metro UI but I'd think for a deal that big they could probably get Microsoft to fork over a non-Metro version if needed. Plus from my friends that work in the DoD they're heavily Windows-based (Windows Server/IIS/ASP/.NET) so it makes sense to continue that instead of retraining for a *nix based system.

rdtsc3• 14 years ago

Interesting, Ubuntu could help if they wanted to save money, but unfortunately Ubuntu has not gone through the hoops of getting official rubber stamp certifications that say Redhat's RHEL has http://www.redhat.com/solutions/industry/government/certific...

There a good amount of money to be made selling software to the government. They are easily deceived and manipulated to over pay for support as well.

You just have to have someone full time who is trained in navigating the red tape and the network of connections.

dkhenry6• 14 years ago

Ubuntu ( and Debian ) are approved for use. They just might require a specific setup and might require verification they are secure, while RHEL can be used out of the box.

rdtsc3• 14 years ago

Do you have more info on this?

So far we found it is easier to just use RHEL for everything. Up until just recently only RHEL 5 (but now also RHEL 6) since it has full FIPS140-2 and EAL4 certifications.

benoits• 14 years ago

The title is very wrong and the HN comments so far miss the point that windows is a tiny portion of that deal. I don't know the details, but judging by the products involved, I would say no more than 5-10%. Exchange, Sharepoint, all of Office client and server suites, SQL maybe some private cloud, virtualization, monitoring software, dedicated support, maybe some custom DoD regulatory stuff for records management and whatnot, that's what they're paying for.

I do know that the Army was making extensive use of Sharepoint on the fields in Irak for example.

dkhenry6• 14 years ago

Also this wasn't a deal with microsoft it was a deal with Insight Enterprises so expect a large portion of that deal to go towards consulting

bascule• 14 years ago

My understanding of Windows (which I admittedly have not used day-to-day for the past two years) is that most businesses have typically upgraded on "off-years" (or to make an analogy to Intel's tick-tock yearly release schedule, let's call them "tock" years)

If I understand correctly, the upgrade path looks something like NT4 => XP => Windows 7, skipping Windows 2000 and Windows Vista.

I've not heard of a large customer like this adopting such an experimental release. It certainly seems strange to me, especially considering Windows 8's tepid reception in the marketplace.

Anyone understand the reasoning for adopting this release instead of holding out for the next one, where (hopefully) all the egregious mistakes they've made redesigning the UI will have some sort of acceptable resolution?

dkhenry6• 14 years ago

The DoD was heavy users of every version of windows thats been released. For a while there was a large number of users and divisions that stuck with XP, but for the most part they just get the newest thing out there. The DoD doesn't operate like a giant corporation they are more like thousands of corporations that have a weird and convoluted relationship to each other.

sliverstorm3• 14 years ago

There's probably quite a bit of infrastructure still on XP though, which could help explain a move to Win8

KaoruAoiShiho• 14 years ago

I don't understand how this release is experimental. W8 works just fine in regular desktop mode, and has much better UX than W7 in several areas. The addition of Metro is just an optional new thing that you do not have to embrace.

breckenedge2• 14 years ago

My experience with W8 has been like a ping pong match between the two interfaces. If there's a way to disable metro completely, I'd be really happy to hear it.

thinkbohemian• 14 years ago

When this happened in Egypt is spawned protests: http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/activists-protest-micro... while I would support an all linux DoD, I wish even more that one day I might be passionate enough to do something more about it.

dkhenry6• 14 years ago

In reality this isn't that much money. When you consider that the entirity of the DoD runs on Exchange. They are heavy users of sharepoint and in addition to all the Desktops the DoD uses Windows on most of their deployed systems you quickly get to a staggering number of desktops and systems. Then we can start on office by then your at maybe half the actual cost. If you look this was sold to a reseller and I would venture a guess that a good chunk is for actual deployments integrating CaC cards and working with Network operators.

While I would fully support the DoD taking the plung and switching over to Linux for desktops the truth is I don't think there is a Linux vendor out there (Including Red Hat and Oracle ) that has the support infrastructure to deal with the amount of support the DoD will require. It would make more sense to get the DoD migrated to a standards based deployment that was inter-operable between divisions and vendors. Then you would see Linux support shops start to take away friendly divisions and slowly get market share. Without that your never going to see anything but a Microsoft monopoly.

therobot24• 14 years ago

Also if i recall correctly with Windows it was much easier to make OS images (modifying straight from the master gold images), while RedHat and OpenSUSE merely came with a long list of configurations to perform on the PC in meeting the requirements in DoD 8500-2. Granted full deployment would probably change this, however to be used software gets checked out for 'networthiness', and unfortunately there isn't a lot of COTS software for linux. Switching from anything but Windows would be overly expensive - just isn't worth it as long as Windows maintains a good level of backward compatibility (unlike Apple).

US DoD signs $617 million Windows 8 licensing deal

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