Microsoft has been for a while now trying to convince organizations to upgrade to Windows 7 from XP. In its latest bid to convince organizations to upgrade from Windows
XP, a Microsoft-sponsored report claims that companies end up paying
more than five times in support costs by refusing to upgrade to Windows
7.
The report from IDC
points to rising annual costs in hardware and software support that
ultimately makes the 11-year-old Windows XP a huge time sink for IT
staff. While the results obviously sound very self-serving for
Microsoft, they could serve as a kick in the pants to organizations that
have delayed Windows 7 deployments for too long.
Shockingly, IDC found that 42 percent of the commercial Windows
install base is currently running Windows XP. With Microsoft set to kill
all support for Windows XP in April 2014, many of those companies will
be forced to upgrade within the next few years anyway — there won’t be
anymore Windows updates or security fixes, after all.
“The bottom line: IDC’s research finds businesses that migrate from
Windows XP to Windows 7 will see significant return on investment over
130 percent over a three-year period,” writes Erwin Visser, a senior
director for Windows, in a blog post on Thursday.
“Moreover, Windows 7 gives businesses back hours of user productivity.
Additionally, migrating now to Windows 7 will set businesses up well to
embrace Windows 8 in the future, as IDC found that all indications at
this time are that the move from Windows 7 to Windows 8 will be seamless
for applications and non-impactful to existing hardware.”
As a computer person myself, I can probably figure out why organizations have not upgraded to Windows 7 yet.
- It costs too much money right now
- Skipped over Windows Vista, wanting something much more stable. This argument is rather invalid though, because Windows 7 has been proven to be stable by now.
- Legacy apps. I can accept this argument because some apps can't run under Windows 7, but you can also get Windows XP mode in Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate. XP mode is XP in a virtual machine.
- Hardware is not good enough to run Windows 7. A switch to Linux would be good if that firm can not afford new hardware at the moment.