Businesses Advised To Ditch XP For Windows 7

Analyst house Gartner has warned in a new report that businesses that Windows XP should be eliminated from their office PCs by the end of 2012.

Gartner advises both ISVs (independent software vendors) and application-builders begin to cut off their support for the ageing operating system in earnest. At the same time, the report states, organisations planning on a Windows 7 transition should begin planning and testing this year.

Plan Migration Now

“In various Gartner polls and surveys, 80 percent of respondents report skipping Windows Vista. With Windows XP getting older and Windows 8 nowhere in sight, organisations need to be planning their migrations to Windows 7,” Michael Silver, an analyst with Gartner, wrote in a 2 June statement accompanying the report.

“Windows 7 has been getting positive reviews, and many clients report that they have plans to start their production deployments, but there are some that are still undecided about when to start and how quickly to do the migration.”

The timetable for a Windows 7 migration should take into account when ISVs can begin providing the right level of support for a business’s applications, the report advises, in addition to the time needed to test applications, build images, and launch a Windows 7 pilot program. Eliminating Windows XP from an ecosystem, though, is also a delicate matter.

“Taking the attrition approach will immediately identify the time scale for the project,” reads Gartner’s advice. “Organisations should consider their PC refresh rate and their target end date in order to determine how many PCs can be moved to Windows 7 by attrition. However, based on the typical PC refresh rate, many organizations will not be able to get Windows XP out by their target end date by moving to Windows 7 by attrition alone.” Planning, testing and piloting Windows 7, they estimate, will need between 12 and 18 months for most organisations.

The report itself can be found here.

Lack Of Support

Days before Windows 7’s official launch in October 2009, Gartner detailed in an analyst presentation how generalised lack of XP support from ISVs would start around 2011, with a support “XP danger zone” developing by the end of 2012.

“Typically, more than half of your organisation’s apps require Windows,” Gartner analysts Silver and Stephen Kleynhans wrote in that presentation. “Replacing it is not an option.” At the time, they also recommended that businesses eliminate XP infrastructure by the end of 2012, well ahead of Microsoft’s scheduled security-support termination in April 2014. For Vista, Gartner suggested continuing deployment on new PCs if already started, before switching to Windows 7 in 2011.

Previous to Windows 7’s release, the thought among many analysts was that the new operating system would impel a massive corporate tech refresh, with businesses looking to finally upgrade their IT infrastructure after years of recession-tightened budgets.

While Windows 7 proved to be a massive consumer hit, however, with more than 90 million licenses sold to date, business spending on the operating system has not yet matched that heady uptake.