The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has plans to roll out Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system starting from June. The deployment is supposed to cover 10,000 computers and is expected to be concluded by the end of the year. The entire cost of the rollout is to be taken care of by an annual service agreement with IBM.

DEFRA is probably among the few other central government departments that are committed to a Vista deployment, but it is certainly an early adopter of the same. According to it, Vista’s power management features will help minimise the department’s carbon footprint. The BitLocker encryption system is supposed to enhance the security. The hibernating feature of Vista can save almost £20,000 in energy costs per year.

The Vista upgrade is a part of a normal technical refresh of DEFRA systems. It was chosen over XP in order to avoid another near term upgrade, as a result saving both time and resources. Mike Haigh, the government marketing manager for Microsoft in the UK, is happy that a number of central government departments are planning to deploy Vista.