Pentagon To Pay Microsoft $1bn For Tech Support

Microsoft has been awarded a $927m (£749m) contract to provide technical support to the Defense Information Systems Agency, the Pentagon has reportedly revealed.

The massive contract comes after the US Department of Defence upgraded 4 million seats to Windows 10 earlier this year.

The contract is noteworthy as Microsoft has been pushing Windows 10 hard ever since its release in July 2015, and the US DoD is a huge potential client of the operating system.

Tech Support

While there is no official comment on the contract by either Microsoft or the DoD, Reuters did reveal the financial terms of the deal.

It is reported that Microsoft will provide consulting services that includes software developers and product teams to help the US DoD utilise its existing proprietary systems.

It should be noted that the Pentagon is already a large Microsoft users. In 2013 for example, Microsoft secured approval for its Windows Azure cloud platform to allow it to be used for  governmental use in the United States.

And in 2015 the US Navy signed a deal with Microsoft to keep the Windows XP operating system supported on its 100,000 computers, despite the fact that ancient operating system was first launched fifteen years ago in 2001.

Earlier this year research revealed that a tenth of all desktops were still running the unsupported Windows XP despite efforts by Microsoft to make users upgrade to a more modern operating system.

And it seems that many parts of the US military are still in need of a tech upgrade.

Earlier this year it was revealed that the US Department of Defence systems, which co-ordinates intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear bombers is run using a computer system from the 1970s, that uses eight inch floppy discs.

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