back to article Microsoft aims to herd 70% of enterprise onto Windows 7 by mid-2013

Microsoft has set an aggressive target of 70 per cent of enterprise PCs running Windows 7 by the summer of 2013. The Reg has learned from sources close to Microsoft that the goal set by Redmond HQ is for an additional 20 per cent of enterprise PCs to move to Windows 7 by the end of its current fiscal year – on 30 June 2013. …

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  1. Robert E A Harvey

    Hmm.

    So, it seems that MS is not expecting Enterprise to adopt Windows 8. Thought not.

    $MEGACORP still has hundreds of thousands of us on XP. I know there are some W7 users out there, but lots of corporate systems don't work on it, and our own applications for talking to customer machines are only intermittently happy. I suspect that we might be moving to W7, but I think mid 2013 is over-optimistic.

    1. TeeCee Gold badge

      Re: Hmm.

      Well, as everyone I know working in Enterprise class industries is at some stage of a W7 migration at the moment, I actually think they probably will hit it.

      You also need to factor in that corporate desktop migrations tend to happen fairly rapidly once they kick into the rollout phase[1]. You don't want to be "mix 'n match" for any longer than is absolutely necessary as that really adds cost on the run/support side and adversely impacts other deployments.

      [1] It's the approval, planning, testing and certification bits that are glacially slow, which is why we are where we are.

      1. asdf
        FAIL

        Re: Hmm.

        >Well, as everyone I know working in Enterprise class industries is at some stage of a W7 migration at the moment, I actually think they probably will hit it.

        Stop the presses! Because TeeCee see's it happening it must be true globally. Never mind as the article points out even the %50 number is total BS. Its ok though because in TC we trust.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Hmm.

          Whereas when asdf, another totally anonymous Internet commenter says something is wrong we should trust him or her on the matter?

        2. BlueGreen

          Re: Hmm.

          > because in TC we trust

          Are you accusing him of lying or will you accept he made a point pertinent to the article based on evidence he has to hand?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hmm.

      Why would MS expect major corporate customers to be upgrading to Win8 by mid 2013? A desktop upgrade project is a major undertaking and can take years for large corporations in order to make builds and test them. This is clearly not going to happen in six months. Furthermore most corporate environments won't touch any software until service pack 1 is released, again months away for Win8. Add to that the impending cessation of support for XP and the obvious change is to Win7.

      This is clearly not MS thinking that corporates won't use Win8, but them being realistic and understanding the needs of their corporate users.

  2. Sporkinum

    50% is BS

    I would say that the 50% number is BS. Most larger businesses are still on XP due to legacy apps.

    I work at a Hospital, and we are migrating to 7 next spring. The only reason we are is that we are changing the primary application we use to one that has 7 as a requirement.

  3. Roger Greenwood
    Go

    "apps dependent on the Windows XP browsers"

    These apps must be truly awesome, to be worth such cost and upheaval every time MS gets a clever idea. What price a more standards based approach?

    1. TeeCee Gold badge

      Re: "apps dependent on the Windows XP browsers"

      Er, no. If they were "awesome" there would almost certainly be a more recent version that works with other stuff.

      This is all the crufty old crap knocked together by world + dog over time that gets accumulated. The problem is invariably that there's shitloads of it, it's antiquated and often poorly documented too.

  4. This post has been deleted by its author

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Dated and cheesy

    A place I work at pretty regularly has XP almost everywhere.

    There are perhaps 2 windows 7 workstations, and they were a pain to get going, since the user policies in AD are incompatible.

    They are also a pain to do anything with, because everything appears to have been moved around or removed for no good reason.

    Why go to all the trouble of migrating to a system that is already dated and cheesy?

    They just rolled out a windows 7 laptop for a home user, who will be accessing the office system via citrix.

    I wonder if they will realise that if someone ports thinstation or similar to a Raspberry Pi it will have pretty much the same function, for a fraction of the cost.

    1. keithpeter Silver badge
      Windows

      Re: Dated and cheesy

      "They just rolled out a windows 7 laptop for a home user, who will be accessing the office system via citrix."

      At the college where I teach, they use little HP thin station clients bolted on the back of the monitors in the student self access areas, about two lots of 40 screens. These used to have Citrix booting up and then the students got an XP like desktop with Office 2007 &c. The Citrix receiver seems to be available for most OSes, I used it from CentOS and Ubuntu linux boxes for a bit, no problems.

      Recently they went over to RDP and the students are getting a Windows Server 2008 thingy with Office 2010. I can get my own staff desktop using RDP as well from Linux and from a clunky old Mac laptop. Works for us.

      Not sure how the economics pan out. I'm just an end user.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I don't think so

    been to a bank branch today (a BIG bank), they run ("happily") on XP, and some of their applications look positively like they were designed for Windows 95 (seriously!)

    1. Christian Berger

      Most Windows software is

      After all there was a "goldrush" in the 1990s and everybody was starting Windows projects. So most Windows software packages are designed for Windows 95. If they don't work there, it's usually because the developers experiment with new technologies as they go along. It's not uncommon to find software packages which use just about any technology from VBX components (the predecessor of Active X on win16) to .net, so they require an hour long installation procedure which includes multiple reboots and can break at any of its 30 or so steps. If you are lucky, it's automatic.

      The situation is so bad, some people think that installation procedures are normal, although Windows perfectly allows you to just drop the .exe file somewhere and execute it. Monolithic executables are one of the main features of Windows.

  7. Nick Ryan Silver badge

    So... the ongoing legacy of lazy, short-sighted, incompetent(*) developers cobbling together applications that only run on specific versions is holding Enterprises back. Who'd have thought that?

    * to be fair, many will have had this foisted on them by much more incompetent PHBs who had no interest in long term support, applicability, security, stability or anything other than that month's statistics.

    Next summer will be 3 years for most older desktops which, given corporate desktop replacement schemes, will mean that the systems are due to be replaced even if they still work fine for the job at hand. These new systems are likely to come with Windows 7, so increasing market penetration of it shouldn't be that unrealistic however "70%" will likely depend on what the marketeers decide to classify "Enterprise"...

    1. Roland6 Silver badge

      Volume Licensing

      >These new systems are likely to come with Windows 7

      Irrelevant, as enterprises with volume license agreements just ignore what ships with the machine and put their own image on...

      However, what enterprises will be having to content with is the new BIOS's and hardware that doesn't have XP drivers. It is probably this factor that will force the upgrade rather than ending of XP support.

      1. Nick Ryan Silver badge

        Re: Volume Licensing

        You're right - that is what I really meant rather than "comes with" - it's more "only supports" as you noted. This is particularly true for laptops that tend to be less supported for older OSes.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Been using 7 for ages. its great. never had any problems with the OS ever.

    I never have.

    You hear horror stories on here all the time and I can only think, WTF are your doing??

    XP, ok, still wearing flares? or still have a mullett, or still banging on about iPhone? Hello last decade, the fanbois are on hold, waiting for you!

    Christ!

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. Silverburn
      Facepalm

      That's lovely.

      Do you mind if I send you our legacy apps for conversion? There's on 16, with only 3 of those deemed "mission critical".

      Only 3,000 workstations too.

      If you can do by tomorrow morning and for free that would be great.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      ignorance is bliss

      I must use a OS to get work done, not to be in fashion.

      Moving things around with new releases just so there is something new to show is the worst marketing, and unfortunately clueless users fall for it.

      As for w7 being an improvement over xp, not really. Some things are better, some worse, like the the file search, which was bad in xp to start with. Nothing to get excited about, especially when you'll have to spend time training to re-learn stuff you knew instead of being productive.

      And if you had used actually good OSes like Solaris, you'd know what you are missing, instead of speaking from between your blinkers.

  9. steve 124
    WTF?

    This makes no sense (I hope you boys are checking your facts)

    Last week there was this article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/24/no_windows_7_sp2/

    Now this announcement makes even less sense than that one did. So you tell us last week Win7 will end support in 2014, and then this week you tell us M$ is pushing for 70% saturation by mid 2013? So M$ is stupid enough to think we (corporate administrators) are going to flock to the W7 and be perfectly ok with <9 months of support before we have to buy W8 (or 9 by then) licenses and migrate the whole fleet again? If these articles actually come true, I will go Citrix or some other shared platform, buy a couple of licenses of Windows and take my chances with the auditors. I simply will not play these reindeer games with my budget.

    1. Christian Berger

      Re: This makes no sense (I hope you boys are checking your facts)

      Maybe the "7" was a typo and Microsoft is aiming at 70% market share by 2013. Last time I counted (it was at a camping holiday) Windows was at roughly one percent with about one single laptop among about 100 I've seen.

  10. PT
    Flame

    "Extended support is a pain for Microsoft, because it diverts people from building new versions of Windows."

    Surely this is a Good Thing and needs to be encouraged. The world does not need any more versions of Windows.

  11. deadlockvictim

    Too many products too often

    Dear Microsoft,

    You release products too often and each iteration requires, as a rule, more powerful hardware, or simply put, new hardware. This is not very user friendly. The new software is not always a pleasant experience. Would you let your testers dictate to marketing, rather than the other way around please?

    Would you release products, with, say a 5-year interval, that are so stable and impressive that making the upgrade is something that we'd really like to do, not something that you want us to do please?

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