What's Driving Microsoft Windows 10 Adoption?

[steven36]

Windows 10 is poised to become the most widely installed version of Windows ever, as reports indicate that a whopping number of enterprises will have started Windows 10 deployments in the coming months. At present everyone is eyeing the next major release in April with Microsoft stating that its new Windows 10 Creators Update will be the most secure version yet, and richer in functionalities.

 

 

Windows 10 Creators Update to drive growth

Not only Microsoft is looking to make a difference with its new Windows Defender Security Centre that will ensure that users are protected by default , Windows 10 creators update will include a new service called Windows MyPeople, looks to  streamline your communications and make it easier to stay in contact with teams, bringing together several of the most popular communication services, including Mail, Skype, Xbox live and even SMS from mobile phones, to make sure you never miss a key message.

 

Microsoft has big hopes for its HoloLens hardware in 2017, as it believes the augmented/virtual reality headset is able to transform the world around. For example, users will also be able to use HoloLens to transport themselves into a virtual ‘home’ where they can interact with their favourite apps and 3D memories in a “mixed reality” world.

 

Meanwhile, results from the recent Decision-Maker Mobile Technology Survey, showed changes since last year’s survey are wide-reaching. They encompass shifts in technology buying and spending levels, new priorities and challenges, organizational change, and brand affinities. 400 mobile technology decision-makers in the US and other countries were surveyed on their purchasing preferences for enterprise mobility and digital workplace products.

 

The research identifies trends in both the acceleration of Windows 10 adoption, as well as the convergence of the PC Management and Enterprise Mobility Management teams and strategies. According to the survey, 86% of firms stated they would upgrade their Windows PCs to Windows 10 within 3-4 years. Nearly 50% of those organizations say they will upgrade in the next 12 months. Over 8 in 10 firms said they planned to converge their PC management and Enterprise Mobility management strategy and teams. Also, 44% of firms say they planned to do this convergence within the next 12 months.

 

The research found that telemetry comes back to Microsoft from millions of devices around the world. Of the 85M monthly active users of Office 365, over 95% of the cloud identities are being managed by Azure Active Directory (Premium). If you are using something else as your IDP, you are built on a configuration that is not widely used.  You can massively simplify if you move to just use what comes from Microsoft. EMS grew more than 135% over the previous quarter- a staggering 400% faster than the nearest EMM provider.

 

The research said, Microsoft now have the largest EMM customer base with more than 41,000 unique customers – which is 200% – 300% larger than other EMM providers. ”One of the most important things that we provide for each of these SaaS apps is the ability to identify user accounts exhibiting suspicious behaviors while attempting to access corporate content.  The conditional access capabilities within EMS protects this access to company data in the SaaS services,” it said.

 

The big challenge

While Microsoft invests serious time and money into making Windows 10 the best-performing, most feature-rich, and safest operating systems around. As CEO Satya Nadella said, Microsoft wants people to love Windows, rather than using it just because they have no choice. That’s why the continued adoption of Windows 10 is an important metric for Microsoft and one that it’s closely watching. When these metrics are stagnant or going down, it’s cause for some concern, and the latest Steam and NetMarketShare data are two examples, as per a Neowin report.

 

Windows 10 crossed the 400 million device threshold back in September 2016, and Microsoft hasn’t reported new numbers since. The company had already backed off of its goal of a billion Windows 10 machines by 2018, an indication that while Windows 10’s adoption rate has been good, it hasn’t been great.

Hence, analysts are banking on the release of the next major Windows 10 update, Creators Update that most believe will prod holdouts to make the switch to Windows 10. Moreover, if the PC market improves, new machines running Windows 10 will also help these numbers. 

 

Windows 10 future bright

Despite the worry, the future looks bright for Windows 10, as research firm Gartner expects that at least half of enterprises will have started some production deployments by the beginning of 2017, with an eye to completing their migrations in 2019. Gartner predicts, by 2018, 30 percent of enterprises will spend more on display screens than on PCs. In the digital workplace, users will demand more screen real estate for their workspaces and this will bring forth both higher-resolution screens and more of them, leading to scenarios where more money is spent on display screens than on the PC itself. [Read the full article here]

 

“All of these trends portend a new employee workspace that is more mobile, more capable of working more naturally with humans, and, overall, more productive and secure. Endpoint support staff must rethink the workspace and work with suppliers to rearchitect and re-cost standards,” said Ken Dulaney, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner.

 

“From an IT perspective, Windows 10 and the move of applications to the back end will dramatically change how those applications are delivered to employees. Updates will be more frequent, more incremental and less obvious to the end user. Software vendors and internal IT have much to do to adapt to this new model and to move away from the image management model for PCs of today,” Dulaney concluded.

 

By CXOtoday News Desk

http://www.cxotoday.com/story/whats-driving-microsoft-windows-10-adoption-in-business/

 

[stylemessiah]

Request title change to "What's Driving Microsoft Windows 10 Adoption into the ground"

 

By the way, the answer is obvious...Windows 10

[steven36]

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The terms of that agreement don't change often, which is an important assurance for business customers who tend to be conservative in their approach to upgrades.

 

 

And it's worth noting that the end-of-support date is not a death sentence. PCs running Windows XP are still out there, running merrily along. Likewise, Windows 7 PCs will not stop working when the clock runs out. The only difference will be an eerie quiet on the second Tuesday of each month. When the extended support period ends, so do those Patch Tuesday security updates.

 

Large enterprise customers who have custom support agreements with Microsoft and who are willing to pay a very steep price for a Premium Support agreement have, in the past, been allowed to

 

receive custom updates after the official end of support. The last such support agreement for Windows 2000 ended this year, more than six years after extended support officially ended, and some Windows XP customers are still under custom support plans.

 

 

 

But even that option is undergoing major change. Microsoft confirmed recently that its enterprise customers will not be able to extend support for Office 2007:

The Office 2007 wave of products will be reaching end of support over the next 12 months, as per Microsoft Lifecycle Policy. After those end of support dates, we will no longer offer custom support on any version of Office products (Exchange Server; Office Suites; SharePoint Server; Office Communications Server; Lync Server; Skype for Business Server; Project Server and Visio).

It's possible that Microsoft will set a similar hard line for Windows 7, but that decision is far from settled and will depend to a large extent on how many PCs are still running Windows 7 as the 2020 deadline rolls around.

 

 

In the past, when Microsoft released a new version of each of its flagship products every two or three years, the company was obligated to offer ongoing support for as many as five versions of Windows at one time, for desktop and notebook PCs.

 

The 10-year support lifecycle is in the process of changing, as Microsoft moves to its "Windows as a service" and Office 365 subscription models. But for a few more years, at least, shrink-wrapped software is still alive and kicking.

 

http://www.zdnet.com/article/when-will-microsoft-pull-the-plug-on-your-version-of-windows-or-office/

Microsoft  is most likely is going  to stick to the Large enterprise customers and not sell them updates for millions of dollars like they did in the past  they didn't do it for Office 2007 now there making good on Office 365. Even if they do give Large enterprise customers updates for Windows 7 for millions of  dollars a year , Small businesses cant afford it and since most of there are windows 7 pro  they dont qualify even if they could afford it  . If you're a  business that gets audited you have no choice .

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In general, regulatory and industry compliance frameworks like PCI-DSS, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), Health Insurance Portability and Accessibility Act (HIPAA), and Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) don't call out specific platforms or tools. Compliance requirements are typically written as broad guidelines to provide a baseline for security and data protection without endorsing any specific solution or painting the compliance framework into a corner using technology that might be obsolete next year.

 

 

Some requirements might simply specify that the operating system must have the most current patches applied. One could make an argument that as long as any updates for Windows XP up through April 8 have been installed, that this requirement is met, because those would be the "most current" patches available. Such an argument clearly violates the spirit of compliance, even if it doesn't explicitly violate the letter of the rules.

 

In some cases, risk can be mitigated through compensating controls. In English, that means that performing more frequent audits of security configurations, implementing additional layers of defense (such as firewalls, file integrity monitoring, intrusion detection / prevention, or other security tools), or including supplemental processes or technologies might be used to reduce the overall risk and stay in compliance.

 

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/compliance-why-you-cant-afford-to-stay-with-windows-xp/

You can set back at home and say i'm never going too  update  but when you're a business you could lose you're health insurance , medical lic  etc. and Microsoft even audits business. You think them  trying to give people Windows 10  by forcing it on noobs who didn't know how uninstall 2 updates and update manually  for free is bad .

 

Home users get upset when it happens to them and it was for free but it happened  to business not long ago and it was Windows 7 that was forced on business and they had too give Microsoft tons of money and this is the future for Windows 7 for business and the clock is running down and you can't stop fate and the wrath of Microsoft  They can accept it  now or they can accept  it later but they will accept it or ether the only other choices they have is switch too Mac OS or Linux.