Vista - Army migrating computers to Vista

Army migrating computers to Vista

May 20, 2009
By Gary Sheftick and Delawese Fulton



Photo credit Courtesy photo


A squad of soldiers work in a computer lab at an NCO Academy Warrior Leaders Course. The Army is migrating all of its Windows-based computers to Microsoft's Vista operating system to bolster Internet security and standardize its information systems by Dec. 31.

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, May 20, 2009) -- The Army is migrating all of its Windows-based computers to Microsoft's Vista operating system to bolster Internet security and standardize its information systems.

The systems change, which includes swapping Office 2003 for Office 2007, is set to be completed by Dec. 31.

About half of the Army's 744,000 desktop computers have already installed Office 2007, estimated Dr. Army Harding, director of Enterprise Information Technology Services for the Army's G-6. She said about 13 percent of the computers have migrated so far to VISTA.

The migration was mandated in a Fragmentary Order published Nov. 22, 2008. It was sent out Army-wide as FRAGO 2 to Department of the Army Executive Order 056-05.

"It's for all desktop computers on the SIPR and NIPRNET," Harding said, referring to both the classified and unclassified networks. She added that the only exemptions are standalone weapons systems.

First-time Vista users will discover added support for data encryption, a new Windows Explorer, upgraded icons and navigation structure. There are also graphical replications of clock, calendar, weather and Outlook mail functions.

The switch to Office 2007 actually began earlier than the Vista migration, Harding said.

The new Office suite provides more straightforward document security, according to reviews, which add there's better integration throughout applications. But the new tools interface is not always intuitive and many reviews say there's a steep learning curve.

In the continental United States, the Army has installed Vista so far in about 44,000 computers. Fort Campbell, Ky., is leading the charge with more than 5,350 computers migrated to Vista, according to G-6 data.

Fort Stewart, Ga., has about 3,800 computers installed with Vista. Fort Lewis, Wash., and Fort Drum, N.Y., both have more than 2,150 computers migrated.

Fort Jackson, S.C., has just over 1,000 of more than 7,500 computers converted to Vista. But Directorate of Information Management officials there say they are on track to meet the December deadline.

"The goal is to minimize the impact to the installation's training mission," said Marcus D. Good, chief of the Information Technology Systems Support Division at DOIM.

"We want to handle this migration in a way that makes sense to the organizations fielded."

"As for the impact on Fort Jackson, the DOIM has been working with the installation's IT professionals and Information Management Officers from many different organizations to test Vista in a controlled and limited deployment," Good said.

Fort Jackson's DOIM officials say the initiative will strengthen Army LandWarNet security by reducing opportunities for hackers to access and exploit government computer systems.

"The Army has been testing Vista since its release and has run it through the Army Golden Master program. The Army Golden Master program is responsible for the release of the Army standard baseline configurations for commonly used computing environments within the Army Enterprise Infrastructure, the team responsible for making sure applications that ran on XP will run on Vista," Good said.

As with the implementation of any new technology, there will be challenges to overcome -- not to mention this will be a change for users who have gotten comfortable with Windows XP and Office 2003. The new look and feel will take some time to adjust to, Good said.

The Soldier Support Institute staff was first to begin migrating to the new operating system at Fort Jackson.

Sharon Reed, chief of IT at the Soldier Support Institute said the division is providing several resources to facilitate the transition for its employees and customers.

"During this process, we are offering several in-house training sessions, helpful quick-tip handouts and free Army online training," Reed said.

Reed added that because several of the division's employees already use Vista and Office 2007 at their homes, it has shortened the learning curve for SSI overall.

The 171st Infantry Brigade started the Vista system last week, said Lashanda Howard, DOIM Vista migration project leader.

Howard said the roll-out is well planned and strategic. Classroom computers, dayroom and kiosk computers, new computers (such as life cycle replacement computers) and computers with minimal impact to mission readiness will be part of the initial implementation.

Soldiers and employees who have never used the operating system, can preview it and begin training by visiting Redirect to the login page and https://train.gordon.
army.mil/.

(Delawese Fulton writes for the Fort Jackson Leader newspaper.)

And then they'll migrate to Seven when 8 is released. Good to see they're keeping up to date

Two steps forward...One step back.

The military cannot afford to be using cutting edge software. Lives are at stake. So they use software that has been out for awhile.

It's not uncommon for large organizations to require "extensive testing" and wait out a long time to deploy something this widespread. Shake-out periods can last for 3 years. In my previous involvement with Windows 2000 and XP, my company took about 3 years to test those and release in “deployment sectors" even. It seemed kind of odd to start using the old stuff as the new stuff starts coming out, but having gone through it and understanding the process, that's what you have to do because you just can't trust that the brand new things will work off the bat for everything you got…which MS affects a large portion of what you got. And not everything works! So you have to solve your issues and that takes time. We had practically everything…mainframes, Windows Server, IIS, Unix, Linux, Sharepoint, running all sorts of vendor and in-house stuff in Cobol, C, C++, .NET, java, pearl, PL/1 (that's right…Programming Language 1), DB2, Oracle, Sybase, Access, SQL Server and more.

Small and Medium businesses maybe you can jump right into Windows 7 and not risk that much (depending on how deeply you are into IT). But you're not going to see many enterprises do something that reckless.

And remember that Windows 7 is STILL a Microsoft product and they are still going to hype it as much as they can just like they hyped Vista…and hyped XP…and hyped Zune…etc. It's not going to be "flawless" when they release it, no matter how much they spend on marketing. And in the far-fetched hypothetical case that Windows 7 is flawless, enterprise systems will not be flawless and will require shake-out. And in reality, there are those who can’t wait that extra couple of years to deploy Windows 7, despite what people like to believe.

I totally agree here. This lends some weight to the fact that Vista is stable and is meeting the needs of the U.S. Army.

Cheers,

In my other life I help develop integrated communications systems. Due to the development timescales my latest project (which is yet to be delivered) is still based on XP SP2 & Server 2003.

However, as these systems are 'closed' systems (i.e. with no internet or WAN connection) as long as the OS is proven reliable and will 'do the job' it doesn't really matter that it's not the latest OS release.

Yeah, there are tons of Windows computers not connected to the internet. Some are however connected to an intranet of sorts to call up service manuals and or exchange data and statuses. Maybe wirelessly nowadays. Some still run Win 31 and 2K. If it ain’t broke and does the job, you don’t need to fix it. I’m sure the lines that mass produce some bullets might be automated by Win31 still. Changing it to Vista wouldn’t make the bullets any faster so why go through the trouble?