When supplier product lifecycles fight back

As a young systems engineer I was often mentored by my Chief Systems Engineer to define requirements beyond product features and consider the “ilities”.  These “ilities,” such as reliability, maintainability, and supportability define the success of the product over the entire product lifecycle.  As a mid-twenties systems engineer it was hard for me to imagine the issues a product would see over its twenty plus planned product lifecycle.  So, the exercise was not as successful as I had hoped.  Today, I see the potential consequences of not meeting these requirements over a product’s lifecycle when a software supplier’s product lifecycle is misaligned with the manufacturers’ expectations and product needs.

The upcoming Windows 7 migration that Microsoft is pushing by dropping support for Windows 7 by January 14, 2020 is an issue affecting many different product segments in Industrial and Aerospace and Defense that rely on long product lifecycles. The issues and consequences that arise from this migration can result in a major upgrade project that can be either a problem or an opportunity.  In the recently released whitepaper linked to below, we describe the problem as it affects the financial critical infrastructure market, specifically ATM manufacturers and operators, which as you can imagine consider security and stability keys to their success.

Ultimately, manufacturers need to consider the opportunity this required migration provides as well.  The anticipated costs of this forced migration for some can be used to justify the investment necessary to relieve the overarching product lifecycle misalignment problem by adopting an open source solution that better allows them to manage long-term support costs.  The Wind River Professional Services team is experienced in helping our customers make this transition to an open source solution like Wind River Linux on your preferred hardware platform.

Read the solution brief: Microsoft Windows 7 Extended Support Ends in 2020. What Are the Options for Bank ATM Systems?