US Military Signs Modernization Deal With Microsoft

Dupple writes with news that Microsoft has signed an agreement with the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, and the Defense Information Systems Agency to modernize the software those organizations use. According to Microsoft, the deal will cover 75% of all Department of Defense personnel, and bring to them the latest versions of SharePoint, Office, and Windows. The deal awards Microsoft $617 million, which is after discounts to the software totaling in the tens of millions. Interestingly, DISA's senior procurement executive said, "[The agreement] recognizes the shift to mobility. Microsoft is committed to making sure that the technology within the agreement has a mobile-first focus, and we expect to begin to take advantage of Microsoft’s mobile offerings as part of our enterprise mobility ecosystem."

Bad Move

[tom229]

Wow... Having just received a demo Surface and ATIV S I'd strongly advise the Army / Airforce to consult a second opinion.

get them to load one of the 3rd party start menu f

[Joe_Dragon]

get them to load one of the 3rd party start menus for 8 if they load it.

But windows 8 in any big setting with no SP1 and windows 9 on the way soon (that may fix of the windows 8 issues) May end up in testing and by the time testing is done windows 8 may be as dead as ME was.

Yet another boondoggle

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for the DoD. I predict this will end up costing 10x as much, take at least 5 years longer than proposed and in the end deliver less than 30% of the functionality actually required. I've seen it happen time and again with only a few of the more egregious failures actually becoming public.

Re:Hope it's not windows 8

[nschubach]

It's not Windows 8 I'm concerned with... it's forcing Sharepoint on the Military...

Re:FML

[jgrahn]

And more Sharepoint? We use Sharepoint at work, and everyone hates it. We're currently looking at finding a suitable replacement.

Isn't just about *anything* a suitable replacement for Sharepoint? Where I work it's used as a cruel and unfair parody of a wiki, so MediaWiki is one obvious replacement. Another replacement would be, I guess, a version control system like Git.

Re:Win 8 Tactile Systems instructions

[Anonymous Coward]

Provided that the call center was not a previous target. Outsourcing, you know...

==//==

I bet it hits $1,000,000,000 before failing

[kawabago]

I'll bet the military will spend a billion dollars before realizing nothing is ever going to work, except the BSOD.

Re:and how well will that work??

[PCM2]

and how well will that work?? will they be desktop mode most of the time???

Probably. I know my Windows 8 machine is. It's basically just Windows 7, only it uses fewer resources. Don't believe the people who tell you the Start Screen is some kind of apocalypse. It's easy to ignore. I think it would be a dumb move for the military to sign a deal like this only to stick with Windows 7, actually.

Re:subtle move by the anti-war crowd

[fredprado]

Whoever is this "they" you are talking about you may rest assure will ask for no such thing. The users, on the other hand, who will be infuriated by the Metro interface won't have a say on that.

Re:I bet it hits $1,000,000,000 before failing

[uvajed_ekil]

But of course they won't admit failure, they'll just feed us some BS about modernizing to stay ahead of changing dynamics on the global stage, with a need to keep options open while refocusing to combat ever changing threat vectors for AMERICA, and mission accomplished. And oh yeah, they're gonna need another tril for that.