Windows 7 overshadows
Fuchs adds that Windows 7 has been tremendously successful and not without reason. "Businesses like it, IT teams like it, and many won't see a compelling reason to switch straightaway. It's classic 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' mentality.
"Likewise, there are usually teething problems when new operating systems are introduced, sometimes more noticeably than others. A lot of businesses would rather wait around until the kinks are ironed out, and you can hardly blame them."
But there will come a time when things will have to be fixed. Software moves on, loses support and a whole ton of reasons make upgrading the only option. Another reason, according to Damian Dwyer, practice director of End User Computing at IT Services firm ECS, is a real drive within organisations to 'standardise' the desktop, with the aim of reducing support and maintenance costs (usually with a single desktop build).
"However, the costs of maintaining a modern hardware platform on a legacy OS that is no longer supported – and subsequently transitioning that OS to a future 2+ version – can be significant," he says.
Arbitrary migration deadlines
Adrian Foxall, CEO of Camwood, says that businesses need to update (or at least start planning their upgrade) before Microsoft thrusts yet another arbitrary migration deadline upon them. In January 2020 Microsoft will end support for Windows 7.
"While this may seem a long time away, from our experience working directly with large enterprises, we know it took many as long as five years to move their entire organisation from Windows XP to Windows 7. If this is the case with Windows 10, these businesses are already behind schedule!" says Foxall.
Foxall further notes that we should not expect every organisation to have made the switch to Windows 10 within the next 12 or even 24 months, but given the 2020 deadline for Windows 7 they should at least be considering how they will make the migration.
"Given how many businesses missed the Windows XP deadline, it would be ideal to see IT departments preparing their staff and developing a strategy now, before the migration is thrust upon them from above," he says.
Foxall says that most important of all though, Windows 10 will likely be remembered as the last big Microsoft migration. "As many IT professionals have long since suspected, developers at Microsoft have announced that Windows 10 will be the 'last version of Windows', with the tech giant planning to switch to an ongoing subscription model."
Michael Dortch, senior product marketing manager at Landesk, says the next 12 months are going to reveal "whether or not customers are comfortable with the idea of frequent updates".
"Customers may want to monitor how well this works on a limited number of systems, and then decide whether to run on the Current Branch for Business or the Long Term Servicing Branch."
The Long Term Servicing Branch approach is similar to how Microsoft has rolled out Windows updates in the past (i.e. every couple of years), whereas the Current Branch option provides security updates, bug fixes, and new features every few months, and includes four sub-branch options, each tailored to suit differing business needs and the degrees of control administrators might want to take with regards to updates.
The final version of Windows?
Windows 10 is almost certainly the last large-scale OS planned. Foxall says that Windows 10 is more than just yet another upgrade, noting that "it is a jump to a whole new generation of Microsoft operating systems, and a first step towards Windows as a Service."
Perhaps in the future, we won't be asking if you should upgrade Windows, but if you can ever avoid doing so.
