Windows 7 Business Penetration Improving

Lack of enthusiasm for Vista meant that Windows XP managed to outlast nearly every prediction for how long it would stick around. However it looks like Windows 7 has then and actually turned that tide, with 94 per cent of new PCs now shipping running Windows 7 and 42 per cent of corporate desktops running the OS, according to technology firm Gartner.

While that might sound like a low figure if you’re an early adopter who is already salivating for Windows 8, business adoption of new operating systems is always much slower. Planning to switch operating systems often takes a year or more and involves considering a stack of fairly complicated issues.

Sigh of relief at the Windows 7 uptake

Microsoft is doubtless breathing a sigh of relief at the Windows 7 uptake, nevertheless the future however looks tricky. Gartner anticipates that the shift towards virtualisation and the widespread adoption of BYO device policies means that we might not see the same pattern of widespread migration again:

Gartner’s forecast assumes that Windows 7 is likely to be the last version of Microsoft OS that gets deployed to everybody through big corporatewide migration. Henceforth, many organizations will as well use alternative client computing architectures for standard PCs with Windows OS, and move toward virtualization and cloud computing in the at once five years.

We’re getting there. The majority of our organisation runs Windows XP, however that’s because of a few reasons.

And when all is said and done, we’re all in all running some legacy software that doesn’t play nice with Windows 7 without some issues (e.g. our library system requires admin privileges. Not something we’re giving to staff just but.

But our fleet of 300 netbooks and all staff machines are running Windows 7, as so then as IT, and it’s been great so far. Far smoother than Vista, for sure.

Some government-created software we have to use is dropping all windows XP support in the then and there month or two, so I’m starting our 7 rollout quite in the near future. If it wasn’t for that, I’d probably stagger the rollout over a year or so as we retire old hardware.

The intent to roll out early 2012

I know of two major banks that are trialling Windows 7 with the intent to roll out early 2012. One has a hangup on an internal accounting system that doesn’t play nice with anything other than IE6. *shudders*

We moved to 7 some time ago with a new PC roll-out. I am nevertheless still using my old XP machine as I broke Windows 7 on my new one and haven’t been bothered to fix it.