10 Actions To Take Now Before Windows XP Sunset Date

win/xp sunset

Sunset Windows/XPA few week’s ago we brought you the latest information/news regarding the Windows XP Sunset Date on April 8, 2014. That’s 10 months folks – less than a year. All products come to an end-of-life but the question is – has your Credit Union done the necessary preparations in time? Let’s look at some of the action items you should be doing now!

Let’s start with a little due diligence. Every IT manager should have an intimate knowledge of how this event will impact their infrastructure. But in order to know that, one must do some homework:

  • Start with an inventory of systems to determine which ones will be impacted. Are these critical servers/workstations? Most IT environments today have some sort of workstation/server auditing functionality. Use this tool to gather key operating system details.
  • Just because you’ve identified all your effected servers/workstations doesn’t mean you’re done. Far from it. Look closer at these systems at the application level. What applications are running on these servers? What measures have been taken to identify all third party applications and what is their status in terms of migrating to a newer operating system?
  • And let’s not forget your peripheral to include printers, check/imaging systems, scanners, etc. It’s even possible your ATMs or other member facing platform could be impacted. IDENTIFY and PRIORITIZE upgrades.
  • Budget cycles are notoriously slow. Do you have the budget dollars set aside to replace or outsource? Look at that date again – April 2014. That means you have to identify, research options, obtain quotes, possible go to the Technology Committee/Board and THEN you’ll probably be asked why didn’t anyone put this in the 5 year plan (that’s another blog coming!)
  • Develop a project plan for procurement, installation, migration of applications and testing. Do you really want to be doing 24/7 infrastructure upgrades right before, during and after the holidays? I didn’t think so.
  • If you are even half interested in the concept of a hosted environment – look into it NOW. I used to be a Credit Union IT leader and was fortunate enough to have a 12 person team. Do you know that only 3.5 of those FTEs were dedicated to the core transaction processor? Doesn’t that seem a bit odd? The rest were infrastructure – desktops, servers, firewalls, routers, telecom. Hosting is an opportunity to have fully upgraded systems and to free your team resources up to other IT projects more strategically aligned with your CU goals.
  • Have a conversation with your 3rd party vendors. You’ll want to know they’ve been running their applications on the new operating system for 6-9 months before you bring it into your production environment.
  • Don’t forget testing – each application, each interface, each peripheral must be tested and verified to work as expected in the new environment.
  • Train your Information Technology Staff – Just because it’s Windows doesn’t mean it’s the same. Failing to keep your staff trained at the level needed for systems maintenance is very dangerous and negligent.
  • And rounding out the Top 10 – Save time to train the staff. Operational efficiency goes down temporarily when new systems are implemented. People are resistent to change and especially if the change is forced upon them. Train early and often.

Related Articles:

How Does Microsoft’s End-of-life Impact Credit Unions?

How is the Sunset of Window XP related to DDoS Attacks?

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