Migration to Windows 10 is expected to be faster than previous operating system (OS) adoption, with 85 per cent of enterprises starting deployments by the end of 2017.
According to recent findings by Gartner, security improvements are the leading reason for businesses to upgrade from previous Microsoft operating systems, speeding up migration plans as Redmond’s commitment to protection in the cloud deepens.
“Organisations recognise the need to move to Windows 10, and the total time to both evaluate and deploy Windows 10 has shortened from 23 months to 21 months between surveys that Gartner did during 2015 and 2016,” Gartner research director, Ranjit Atwal, said.
“Large businesses are either already engaged in Windows 10 upgrades or have delayed upgrading until 2018.
"This likely reflects the transition of legacy applications to Windows 10 or replacing those legacy applications before Windows 10 migration takes place.”
When asked what reasons are driving their migration to Windows 10, 49 per cent of respondents said that security improvements were the main reason for the migration with the second most-often-named reason centring around cloud integration capabilities (38 per cent).
However, budgetary approval is not straightforward.
“Windows 10 is not perceived as an immediate business-critical project; it is not surprising that one in four respondents expect issues with budgeting,” Atwal added.
Yet despite the challenge, Windows 10 is poised to become the most widely installed version of Windows ever, following on the path of Windows XP and Windows 7 before it.
“Respondents' device buying intentions have significantly increased as organisations saw third- and fourth-generation products optimised for Windows 10 with longer battery life, touch screens and other Windows 10 features,” Gartner principal research analyst, Meike Escherich, added.
“The intention to purchase convertible notebooks increased as organisations shifted from the testing and pilot phases into the buying and deployment phases.”
By 2018, Gartner predicts that touch screens will be shipped on one-third of all notebooks because as the incremental price for touch decreases, it will become more normalised as a default feature for devices.
Furthermore, 30 per cent of enterprises are expected to spend more on display screens than on PCs within the next 18 months.
In the digital workplace, users are tipped to demand more screen real estate for workspaces, which will bring forth both higher-resolution screens and more of them, leading to scenarios where more money is spent on display screens than on the PC itself.
“All of these trends portend a new employee workspace that is more mobile, more capable of working more naturally with humans, and, overall, more productive and secure,” Gartner vice president and distinguished analyst, Ken Dulaney, added.
“Endpoint support staff must rethink the workspace and work with suppliers to rearchitect and re-cost standards. From an IT perspective, Windows 10 and the move of applications to the back end will dramatically change how those applications are delivered to employees.
“Updates will be more frequent, more incremental and less obvious to the end user. Software vendors and internal IT have much to do to adapt to this new model and to move away from the image management model for PCs of today.”
