Microsoft Scores Big with ATF Hardware upgrade

U.S. government’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also known as ATF has begun upgrade of their hardware PCs managed by Electronic Data System (EDS) via a $68 million two year budget. The upgrade is part of their three year upgrade cycle and the hardware they are bringing in would be capable of running windows Vista.

Gregg Bailey, ATF’s CIO, said that upgrading to Windows Vista would not immediately come after the hardware upgrade since they are still in the process of testing their applications. He also cited that he doesn’t see a compelling need to move to Windows Vista and is comfortable to know that their PCs, after the upgrade, is powerful enough for any migration to the latest operating system.

This is very good news for Microsoft even if a lot of people would view this as negative for the software giant. The agency upgrading to Vista capable hardware while waiting to finish testing all application compatability is fair enough. Windows Vista is not a computer game where gamers are compelled to get their copy on the midnight of it’s release.

The testing time for migration and hardware is within reasonable management timeline which would eventually bring profit and continous growth to Microsoft. The hardware upgrade only signifies that the agency would definitely move to Windows Vista in the future. This also signifies that the agency isn’t changing their operating system; otherwise they could make do with old PCs especially when the “other” OS can run on outdated hardware.

Microsoft scores big on this one.