NSW Department of Education and Training puts Windows Vista mass adoption on hold

April 16, 2007

The NSW Department of Eduction and Training (DET), one of the largest IT infrastructures in Australia with 250,000 devices of which 160,000 are PCs spread across 2,500 locations, has put on hold the mass adoption of Microsoft Windows Vista UltimateÂ in a bid to get a licensing better deal.

Vista Ultimate, the version of the operating system DET uses, requires individual license keys each time the software is installed on client. This requirement, however, makes tracking individual licenses aÂ big headache for aÂ organizations asÂ large as DET.

DET Information Services Director, Tim Anderson believes keeping track of individual keys for a fleet of DET’s size is a logistical nightmare. “It’s a pain when you’re looking at around 160,000 places. It’s not a technical problem, we just have to work out the best way of dealing with it.”

“I can see why Microsoft wants [such a scheme], particularly in the retail market, but in the context of a large corporation it makes less sense. There are other means of compliance than tracking large numbers of keys,” he said.

Anderson wants a more workable license management procedure. His proposal to Microsoft was to remove the requirement for individual license keys and let DET operate and manage its fleet with just a single license key.

Microsoft has refused to comment on the proposal.

“The Microsoft Windows Vista licensing agreement is a confidential agreement between Microsoft and the NSW Department of Education and Training, and as such we are not able to discuss it in detail,” said Nigel Cadywould, Microsoft Australia director of Public Sector.

Despite unresolved licensing issues, DET will honor its 1,000 seat deployment it committed to as part of the early adopter program for Vista for training purposes, which is expected to happen some time before July.

Beyond the initial deployment, DET’s road map for a mass Vista deployment is over the next 12-24 months.

Anderson, like many other CIOs, doesn’t see any compelling reason to fully deploy the new operating system now. Vista won’t be incorporated into the department’s standard operating environment (SOE) until the OS can be exploited to its best advantage, he said.

Last year, DET spent months of vigorously testing Windows Vista within the Department’s Information Technology Directorate, as well as in a pilot program at Ashcroft High School in Sydney’s south west to determine its usefulness now and in the future.