Sunday, May 27, 2012

Microsoft warns Windows XP costs 5X more than Windows 7 to support

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. 
  1. It costs too much money right now
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
If you have any more reasons for not upgrading, post a comment below. You can also type your opinion there as well.