Victorian government paying $4.4m to Microsoft to extend Windows 2003 support

[mr moose]

And the taxpayer yet again has the foot the bill for the government's inability to keep their own house in order, so we're forking out for extended support without any real benefit. There's no cost saving here, in fact it's just a stopgap before we have to pay for an upgrade.

 

Now a reminder that they want to *raise* the GST another 5% in the near future and lower the theshold for GST on imports.

 

It's stuff like this that just shows that they're not responsible enough with taxpayer money they're receiving right now, let alone the increase they are proposing.

 

What percentage of the Ambulance service is running server 2003 and why?  Do you know how many workstations there are and what custom software is being run at each?  do you know if the latest Dispatch software for the police service actually works with the latest server from MS?  I guess you're also an expert on the interconnection software they use and all the other technology that is integrated into the system?

 

Before you start telling everyone how useless the government is why don't you educate yourself on what the actual problem is and how it came about.  Or maybe if you had read the thread you'd have noticed a few posts explaining this already.

[Guest]

And the taxpayer yet again has the foot the bill for the government's inability to keep their own house in order, so we're forking out for extended support without any real benefit. There's no cost saving here, in fact it's just a stopgap before we have to pay for an upgrade.

 

Now a reminder that they want to *raise* the GST another 5% in the near future and lower the theshold for GST on imports.

 

It's stuff like this that just shows that they're not responsible enough with taxpayer money they're receiving right now, let alone the increase they are proposing.

You really don't know what's going on do you? This thread is entirely wrong - the Victorian Government have an agreement with Microsoft to switch over their services to Server 2012 by X date while having continued support for Server 2003 until that date. How do I know this? Because I'm working on a similar deal for a client at the moment. Microsoft offer these to big business whereby the business cannot feasibly switch over to a new platform by the discontinuation date and have to arrange special circumstances inwhich to do so. Part of the contract is that the client has to have a clear action plan in place and provide progress reports on how it is going. The NSW DHS are on a similar thing contract as far as I am aware due to the lack of XP support as are a lot of other large businesses and bodies.

 

Volume Licensing.

It also won't be done under Volume licensing as that is the Open platform, most government's use EA's and some of the time with SA too which cuts down on upgrade costs

[BWSSoldya]

You really don't know what's going on do you? This thread is entirely wrong - the Victorian Government have an agreement with Microsoft to switch over their services to Server 2012 by X date while having continued support for Server 2003 until that date. How do I know this? Because I'm working on a similar deal for a client at the moment. Microsoft offer these to big business whereby the business cannot feasibly switch over to a new platform by the discontinuation date and have to arrange special circumstances inwhich to do so. Part of the contract is that the client has to have a clear action plan in place and provide progress reports on how it is going. The NSW DHS are on a similar thing contract as far as I am aware due to the lack of XP support as are a lot of other large businesses and bodies.

 

Too bad there's a lot of people who only read '4.4 mil' and go 'OMGWTFBBQ Y U NO SPEND ON ZE WINDOWZ 2012'sZ1!1!!!1!1'. Like I get it from their standpoint, they don't have experience with this sort of thing and don't know all of the caveats that are involved with upgrades in a business enviroment. I've been there as a sys admin where you want to go from seperate VM servers to a load balanced VM platform and we simply had to keep 2003 servers and 2008 R2 servers up simply because the websites we were running and the applications that were required for those sites simply didn't ran on 2012. It's not only a pain in the butt for the company (and in this case also for the people who pay the taxes) but it's also a huge pain in the behind for the guys who work with the systems and have to actually maintain the applications and servers.

 

Let's just hope we can get educate people on this stuff and make someone a little wiser.

[Dabombinable]

Maybe if the government gets the same clowns that do the roads the systems would get worse.

Nope, they just need the techies that 'worked' on the my.gov system and everything will collapse (long story short, most governmental departments appear to have no clue what the hell they should do with technology).

[mr moose]

Too bad there's a lot of people who only read '4.4 mil' and go 'OMGWTFBBQ Y U NO SPEND ON ZE WINDOWZ 2012'sZ1!1!!!1!1'. Like I get it from their standpoint, they don't have experience with this sort of thing a

 

 

Mate, I do, I have on and off experience with the education departments IT, have done for a few years now (from about 2004 or there abouts) I even did Hardware consultation for a stint.  And there are still huge chunks of the system and licensing I don't understand.   And to be honest unless you work knee deep in the shit every day or work directly for/with the people responsible for maintaining it I don't think many have a chance of understanding it. 

[decer304]

There is a reason on why the victorian government keeps an old os. I went to visit the Victorian Bureau of Meteorology which is also home to the bushfire commission, and i saw them even running machines, that were up to date hardware wise, but were running windows 95. They were asked by many people on why, and the answer is simple. It works now, and by upgrading, they are risking software glitches, and at the time, when bushfires were at a high risk, were not an option. Even in downtime, a glitch in software can takes months to fix, and that may be too late, and could cost lives. 

[Dabombinable]

There is a reason on why the victorian government keeps an old os. I went to visit the Victorian Bureau of Meteorology which is also home to the bushfire commission, and i saw them even running machines, that were up to date hardware wise, but were running windows 95. They were asked by many people on why, and the answer is simple. It works now, and by upgrading, they are risking software glitches, and at the time, when bushfires were at a high risk, were not an option. Even in downtime, a glitch in software can takes months to fix, and that may be too late, and could cost lives. 

Surely they could at least have a newer OS run on a test system-even 98SE?

[lak]

One thing I would like to see one day is self-aware applications - for example main server infrastructure is updated to Server 20XX and the corresponding machines on the domain are upgraded to Windows XX and then vanilla applications adjust to retain compatibility. I don't see this happening for custom packaged applications anytime soon, but I thought it would be some food for thought. A lot of systems in enterprise are moving to this 'layered' model where these systems have become so advanced that customisations are no longer needed - everything has now become a configuration. This kind of an approach will make upgrades and ports to other vendors much easier and alleviate most of the complexities associated with upgrades/refreshes.

 

I think that once we get past getting the old softwares/applications upgraded we should be somewhat ok. A lot of the older stuff would have possibly been developed with no upgrade path in mind, or minimum thought given. Now that OTA updates are becoming more common, this awareness should reduce the necessity for companies to rely on extended-support due to complexity.

[mr moose]

Surely they could at least have a newer OS run on a test system-even 98SE?

 

They do in the control centres for the power stations.  They have a complete duplicate of the main control centre so they can install new software and monitor the effects before applying it to system critical hardware.

[Dabombinable]

They do in the control centres for the power stations.  They have a complete duplicate of the main control centre so they can install new software and monitor the effects before applying it to system critical hardware.

I take it that even with that upgrading is still a lengthy and expensive process.

[mr moose]

I take it that even with that upgrading is still a lengthy and expensive process.

 

I'm betting so, It's been quite a few years since I was last in the eastern area control centre, but Given even back as far as the 80's the whole control centre was networked to computers in the Melbourne with dual control for automatic emergency shutdown/override in case of cascade. Also power delivery hasn't changed in the last 30 years, just the amount delivered, so all the tech they have from the 70/80's is still good enough so I dare say a very lengthy process to upgrade. 

[Fetzie]

it's a state in Australia

 

Initially I thought this was a satirical article about how the Victorians were pushing to keep 120 year old software via a support contract with Microsoft.

[flibberdipper]

I understand that it may be hard to switch platforms for whatever reason (be it software compatibility, cost, or some kind of database issue), but holy shit... They REALLY should have at least migrated to Server '08 R2 or 2012...