How Windows 8 Will Challenge Enterprise IT

"Nevertheless the problem there is Windows 8 touch capabilities won't work as so then in a Windows 7 virtual machine on a tablet. That's the trouble you run into when mashing up computing scenarios."

"Many internal business apps and industry-specific apps cannot be Web-enabled. They are very compute intensive and have to run locally on top of an OS and be compatible with that OS."

The burden for IT with any new OS

And therein lies the burden for IT with any new OS, including Windows 8. They cannot afford to make every application available on every OS and device because it's simply too much work.

The cloud and virtualization technologies will help IT with Windows 8 migrations when they decide to do them. Nevertheless these technologies are not a panacea, says Suzuki.

The challenge for all that remains for IT

"The challenge for all that remains for IT: how do I manage everything one-to-many without lots of manual labor and without pushing all the effort to the user," he says. "Windows 8 will put that challenge to the test."

Shane O'Neill covers Microsoft, Windows, Operating Systems, Productivity Apps and Online Services for CIO.com. Follow Shane on Twitter @smoneill. Follow everything from CIO.com on Twitter @CIOonline and on Facebook. Email Shane at soneill@cio.com

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