It's the end of the Life Support for Windows XP

Windows XP was a good operating system. I fondly remember the stable Operating System that withstood a premature effort at retirement when Windows Vista was released. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Vista just was not well received in the business arena. The reason? It offered little to no benefit for the effort of an upgrade. That’s the difference between Vista and Windows 7 Professional. Windows 7 Professional has been a viable and stable Operating System pretty much from its release. It offered additional security features that forward-thinking IT departments were quick to focus on.

The bad news? Microsoft will no longer provide support for Windows XP past April 8, 2014.

The worst news? There are A LOT of companies that have yet to migrate to Windows 7.

Reasons for not yet upgrading?

·         Budgetary reasons,
·         Lack of security guidance,
·         Multiple, complex in-house developed applications that rely on Windows XP and an insufficient development budget,
·         Lack of priority,
·         Lack of lifecycle management program,
·         Just didn’t get around to it,
·         Lack of awareness as to the seriousness of this deadline.

Reasons why it matters?

·         No further support from Microsoft,
·         No further security updates,
·         Other software will cease to be updated with support provided for Windows XP

What can be impacted?

·         Ability to respond against targeted attacks
·         Compliance – GLBA, PCI, HIPAA

There are a lot of implications for a company that is still on Windows XP. It COULD be that there are insufficient IT resources to focus on upgrades and maintaining OS levels. What’s scary about that however is that if an IT department isn’t focusing on something as major as an operating system upgrade, where are they with other support questions?

Questions such as

·         Are parameter devices maintained at the appropriate level? One would hope so but isn’t it the same department that isn’t focusing on OS’s?
·         How about patching?
·         If the desktops aren’t being updated in a timely enough basis, what does that say about the servers? Is it possible there are still Windows NT machines sitting around?

So now what?

·         Train your support team on Windows 7,
·         Architect your next OS footprint,
·         Gather an inventory of all desktops,
·         Confirm that the hardware will work with Windows 7 requirements,
   o   If not, have the business order the machines necessary for replacements
·         Pick a business advocate out of each department to work with the IT department to sign off on the testing and the Disaster Recovery Plan
·         Reach out to software partners,
       o   Confirm that their systems are compatible with Windows 7. If they are not, find out what their plan is for support.
       o   You could well have to change software vendors
·         Reach out to device partners such as teller machines or credit card/debit machines,
       o   Confirm that the systems will work or plan on a secondary project to update these as needed
·         Begin departmental User testing to confirm current applications ARE compliant with Windows 7,
       o   Note: This does not mean IT people assigned to test applications. IT people do not test the same way end users do and end users know how their software is supposed to function, whereas IT people interpret what it is supposed to do.
       o   Note2: Schedule the testing over significant production cycles. Don’t overlook End-of-Month, Quarterly, Annual cycles. Software components that are key to the running of the business could only be used four times a year and elements would be easily forgotten and create catastrophes if there were a subsequent failure.

·         Train your business. This probably won’t require more than an hour of training (far less than moving from Office 2003 to Office 2007 did) but it will go a long way toward relieving stress.

The Plan:

As of today, you are one day shy of 7 months. I would shoot for a February 21, 2014 weekend deployment. This way, your accounting and sales departments hopefully have year-end out of the way. With sufficient IT and business resources, you could have your departmental desktop images built (30 days after feedback from partners) and pushed out to testers hopefully in time for them to get  30 days of testing under their belts. If you don’t have sufficient resources, there are IT resources willing to come in and assist (feel free to give me a call, I have mad skills). Leave the users alone in December and start back with a training schedule for January. Hopefully, you’ll be good to go for the first deployment weekend. Stage your upgrades across business units so that you avoid key dates. Understand that performing an upgrade under these circumstances will require more resources, manhours and financially.

And prayer, prayer is always good.