It seemed so clear. Like it or lump it, the top brass realized, your company would move its enterprise desktops to Windows® 7 as Windows® XP came to the end of its sales and service life. Then, Microsoft® changed the rules. At the same time when Microsoft announced the beta program for Windows 7 and Server® 2008 R2 SP1s, the company “decided to extend downgrade rights to Windows XP Professional beyond the previously planned end date at Windows 7 SP1.” This means you’ll still be able to “downgrade” PCs from Windows 7 Professional or Windows 7 Ultimate to Windows XP Pro until early 2015.
Despite that sort-of announcement, Microsoft’s Windows Communications Manager Brandon LeBlanc, insisted that “Support for Windows XP Service Pack 3 will [only] continue through April 2014.” According to Microsoft, “After April 2014, customers will need to either get a custom support agreement or install a more modern OS on those PCs.”
Some observers, like Microsoft expert Ed Bott, think that this means Microsoft won’t generally support Windows XP SP3 even though the company will let you purchase it. Others think that Microsoft won’t cut off Windows XP SP3 support until five years or more after the last copy of XP is sold. This would put Windows XP’s enterprise end-of-life in 2020.
What’s an enterprise IT manager to do? Despite Microsoft’s glowing reports of Windows 7 sales, Tami Reller, Corporate VP and CFO of Windows & Windows Live, admitted at the Worldwide Partner Conference on July 12 that “74 percent of … business PCs are [still] running XP.” Clearly, businesses aren’t rushing to Windows 7.
Some IT executives, like Jeff Cooper, IT Infrastructure Manager at Abbott Vascular Devices, aren’t tempted by the thought of sticking with Windows XP through the end of the decade. Cooper assumes that Windows XP support will still end in April 2014, and that there “will be no more patches issued for XP, and that you are ‘on your own’ by running it without Microsoft backing.”
That really doesn’t appeal to him. “Additionally,” Cooper continued, “third party hardware and software vendors are likely to not support Windows XP beyond what Microsoft has claimed (2014), and are likely to phase out XP support between now and then. So if I understand this correct, organizations should still continue their plans to move to Windows 7 and not interpret this as a reason to slow down.”
Others, like Steve Kilbride, the owner of ThermaRay, sees no reason to shift from Windows XP. “Our choice of OS is driven by the apps that we need to run. So far, we have not found critical applications that rely on newer OSs,” said Kilbride.
Windows 7 isn’t the only option, if he is going to change OSs. Kilbride is also considering replacing Windows XP with Linux or a server-based Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution whenever Windows XP reaches the end of the road. Their concerns are largely driven by financial issues; the company decision makers hope that the growth in software-as-a-service (SaaS) and Web browser-based applications like Google Apps for Business will be mature enough to allow them to avoid paying for pricey Windows 7 Professional or Enterprise client-access licenses (CALs) while still providing basic office-worker functionality using alternative desktop operating systems.
Rajesh Goel, the CTO of Brainlink International, an IT support business, on the other hand, loves Windows 7 both for their in-house users and for their customers. “We’re switching to Windows 7 [and] Office 2010 as fast as possible. Clients love the stability and power. We love the fact that Windows 7-64-bit lets us deploy desktops with 8GB or 12GB of RAM. This is a life saver for folks who like to keep 10-30 Outlook windows, 5-20 PDFs and dozens of Word documents open all day.”
Perhaps the most common response was that companies simply prefer to stick with Windows XP. As Tom Catalini, the Technology VP for William Gallagher Associates, a Boston-based insurance brokerage, observes, “We’ve looked more carefully than ever at our IT investments in recent years, and operating systems quickly fall down the list of initiatives to consider, even among the Microsoft family of products. Investments in their other products, like Office, Exchange, SharePoint, or SQL [Server], would offer much more bang for the buck. So, in some ways, Microsoft is competing with itself for our technology dollars.”
Besides, Catalini continues, “At the end of the day, there just isn’t enough value offered in migrating to a newer version of Windows. An operating system upgrade is very costly, both in terms of time and money, and it’s very disruptive to the end users. In many ways, this is also a testament to the fact that Windows XP is serving our needs very well. We very much welcome the news of extended support for this platform, as it allows us to consider far more strategic investments in technology going forward.”
What about your business? Where do you see its desktop going?
Related Information From Dell.com: Why Dell for Windows 7?
        | 
|
