JUNE 30 -Tuesday. The agreement between the US Navy and Microsoft for the software company to continue providing hotfixes and patches for Windows XP has been approved. The contract has already been announced April this year.
The Custom Service Agreement or CSA amounts to 9.1 million US dollars. Microsoft has stopped providing support and fixes for the 14-year old XP since last year. Companies and agencies which still use XP can opt to pay for continued use. The operating system provides protection for PC users against hackers.
The US Navy's release published in Daily Tech stated, "Across the United States Navy, approximately 100,000 workstations currently use these applications. Support for this software can no longer be obtained under existing agreements with Microsoft because the software has reached the end of maintenance period."
The Navy has announced that it will start shifting to a newer version of windows. It expects the updates to be completed in July next year.
The US Space and Naval Systems Warfare Command spokesperson Steven Davis said the Navy relies on specific softwares and services that XP provides. "Until those applications and programs are modernized or phased out, this continuity of services is required to maintain operational effectiveness," he explained in a CNN report.
Many agencies and companies, apart from the US Navy, still use the Windows XP operating system. CNN cited that in the world, 15% of computers are still running the operating system. Microsoft offers CSAs for users who are adamant about shifting to a higher version of Windows. These CSAs are projected to have 50% inflation rate yearly, reports say.
Windows XP was released and marketed in 2001. Thus, mainstream support for the operating system ceased in 2009. It is still functional in the following years because of extended support. Despite Microsoft's yearly release of new Windows operating systems, XP remained fairly popular among corporations in the world. In China, 49% of all computers are reported to still use XP.
