Ivanti, the company that unifies IT to better manage and secure
the digital workplace, today announced survey results that capture the pain
points and priorities of IT professionals when faced with migrating user
devices to Windows 10. Surprisingly, 59% of IT professionals report that they
still haven't migrated all their users to Windows 10, despite the imminent end
of regular support for Windows 7 on January 14, 2020. As many as 39% will not
be completed with their Windows 10 migration projects in time for the January
deadline.
The
study found that just 39% of respondents reported to have all their users
migrated to Windows 10. Among those that are still migrating, 38% said they
"almost" have all their users migrated, with 23% reporting that they expect to
be complete by the Windows 7 end-of-life date.
It's
the Windows 7 end-of-life date that is driving much of Windows 10's adoption
(44%). However, IT professionals also named vulnerability management and
mitigating security risk (23%), mitigating operational risk (11%) and improving
user productivity (10%) as significant factors in their prioritization of
migrating to the new operating system.
When
asked what has impacted their users' migration the most, IT professionals
ranked the resource time and migration costs involved (57%) at the top,
followed by other higher IT priorities (47%) and concerns over application
readiness and support for Windows 10 (40%).
This
concern over application readiness is further reflected in IT professionals'
reluctancy to update or patch critical business applications. When asked what
most often prevents them from performing software updates:
- 58% said they don't want
the updates/patches to break applications
- 48% said they don't want
updates/patches to impact user productivity
- 29% said it is too time
consuming/manual to do the updates/patches
Windows
10 doesn't seem to be having too much impact on the adoption of virtual or
cloud-based desktops, however. 70% of IT professionals said they use or will
use Windows 10 on physical desktops and laptops while just a quarter use or
will use Windows 10 in hybrid virtual and physical desktop environments.
Perhaps that is because IT professionals expect the cost of maintaining Windows
10 to be the same as Windows 7. In fact, 20% expect the costs for supporting
Windows 10 to be less than Windows 7.
"With
the end of life for Windows 7 rapidly approaching, the pressure on many IT
organizations due to potential costs is increasing," said Duane Newman, vice
president, product management at Ivanti. "Tools that automate the migration
process can dramatically relieve migration resource and time demands while
minimizing cost and ensuring seamless application support. As a result,
enterprises can more quickly benefit from the security advantages of Windows
10, while keeping users productive and mitigating operational risk."
The
complete survey findings can be found here.