18% of Enterprises Holding Back on Windows 10 Upgrade

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Microsoft will officially end support for Windows 7 on January 14, 2020. Many large businesses aren’t ready.

With less than six months until Microsoft officially ends support for Windows 7 on January 14, 2020, the clock is ticking for the 18% of large enterprises that haven’t yet adopted Windows 10.

New research, conducted by Censuswide and commissioned by Kollective, shows nearly one in five large enterprises has yet to complete its migration. When Kollective reported on the state of Windows 10 migration in January 2019, 43% of businesses in the US and UK were still running Windows 7 and 17% of respondents didn’t know about Microsoft’s end-of-support deadline. Six months later, researchers found, 96% of organizations have begun their migration from Windows 7 to Windows 10.

While most (77% of) all businesses have finished the migration, nearly one in five large enterprises has not. Microsoft confirmed Windows 7’s end-of-life four years ago; however, upgrading can be a lengthy process — some firms took up to three years to transition from Windows XP to Windows 7, Kollective reports. Microsoft is offering options to extend support for large organizations but the cost of missing the deadline is an estimated $500,000 for an enterprise with 10,000 machines, researchers add.

The challenges don’t end when migration does. Many IT teams don’t realize how Windows 10 will affect their ongoing patching and update schedule, researchers found. Fifteen percent of IT pros are unaware of Windows-as-a-service and the need to continuously update endpoints.