The UK government has confirmed that it is not going to extend its Windows XP support agreement with Microsoft for another year.
The government had signed a £5.5 million one-year deal with Microsoft in April 2014 to prolong support for the country’s public sector organizations in migrating away from Windows XP. The deal came to an end in April 2015 and the government has refused to renew it.
A recent blog post from the government’s technology team has confirmed that Windows XP support agreement will not be renewed.
“The Technology Leaders met last month and took a collective decision to not extend the support arrangement for 2015. The current support agreement ended in April 2015,” read the post.
“There has been good progress in moving away from Windows XP across departments and government organisations and with many public bodies this transition is complete. We expect most remaining government devices using Windows XP will be able to mitigate any risks, using the CESG guidance. Where this is not possible, they may need to review their own short term transition support.”
According to third-party market share data, Windows XP is still powering some 13 percent of the PCs worldwide. However, these figures are expected to go down even more in the coming months with the Windows 10 launch.
