It won't replace Windows just yet, but it's an option

Jun 4, 2015 14:40 GMT  ·  By

The ATM Industry Association or ATMIA has released a white paper today in which they recommend the use of Windows 10 on ATMs, skipping any intermediary steps, and for the first time they are considering Linux as a viable option.

One of biggest markets for the Windows platform are ATMs, if you can believe that. In fact, a very large number of ATMs are running Windows XP today and given the fact that the support for that OS has been discontinued, that is not good news. This is where the ATM Industry Association comes in, but it's likely that you haven't heard about them.

The best analogy for the ATM Industry Association would be the Linux Foundation. ATMIA is basically a non-profit organization that want to promote ATM convenience, growth and usage worldwide and to protect the ATM industry's assets, interests, good name and public trust. It's as shady as they come, but it has a lot of member across all continents, so companies will usually listed what they have to say.

Linux is being considered

A white paper can be considered a recommendation. In this case, the ATM Industry Association recommends its members to go straight to Windows 10 and skip all the intermediary steps. What's interesting is that the organization also mentions Linux in the same breath, which is not something that you would normally expect from people who have been recommending Windows for the past two decades.

"For those deployers seeking alternatives, the association has a Next Generation ATM Architecture looking into such innovations as Linux-based ATMs or Android-operated ATMs. We expect there to be some parallel trajectories in future with a mainstream solution adopted by the majority of deployers, probably Windows 10 in our view, and alternative systems like Linux and Android," said the CEO of ATMIA, Mike Lee.

It might not seem like much, but this is actually a very important step, although it remains to be seen just how serious they are about this initiative.