IRS misses XP deadline, pays Microsoft millions for patches

IRS misses XP deadline, pays Microsoft millions for patches - Network World:

Computerworld - The U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) acknowledged this week that it missed the April 8 cut-off for Windows XP support, and will be paying Microsoft millions for an extra year of security patches.

.....John Koskinen, the commissioner of the IRS, defended the unfinished migration, saying that his agency had $300 million worth of IT improvements on hold because of budget issues. 

One of those was the XP-to-7 migration.

.....According to Crenshaw, the IRS had previously said it would take $30 million out of its enforcement budget to finish the migration.

......Using that average -- and the number of PCs the IRS admitted were still running XP -- the IRS would pay Microsoft $11.6 million for one year of Custom Support.

The remaining $18.4 million would presumably be used to purchase new PCs to replace the oldest ones running XP. 

If all 58,000 remaining PCs were swapped for newer devices, the IRS would be spending an average of $317 per system.