The vast majority of all companies will have begun migrating to Windows 10 across their workforce by the end of 2017, according to new research.
This comes from a Gartner survey conducted at the end of last year across six countries (including the UK and US), which found that 85% of businesses will have begun deploying Windows 10 in this timeframe.
46% had already begun the move (or completed migration) as of the end of last year, incidentally. At the other end of the spectrum where the hardcore holdouts reside, only 3% said they would never upgrade to Windows 10 (presumably from Windows XP, ahem), and 2% said they’d move come 2020 or later.
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Security blanket
The poll, which questioned over a thousand staff who were involved in the decision-making to migrate to the newest version of Windows, found that the most common reason cited for upgrading – in 49% of cases – was better security.
Cloud integration capabilities came in second place with 38% of respondents valuing this as a reason to make the move to Windows 10. That was closely followed by universal apps, with 34% of those surveyed liking the idea of having software that works across phones, tablets and PCs.
And just behind that, 33% said they were being driven to the new operating system simply by the fact that Windows 7 support reaches end-of-life in 2020.
Gartner did, however, find that there were concerns around budgeting for the deployment of Windows 10.
Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner, noted: “Windows 10 is not perceived as an immediate business-critical project; it is not surprising that one in four respondents expect issues with budgeting.”
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