We are now less than a year away from Windows 10 end of support.
Rather worryingly, the latest report from Stat Counter shows 62.79% of desktops are still running Windows 10. Whilst successive monthly reports from Stat Counter are showing increased Windows 11 utilisation, the adoption rate has been slower than anticipated.
Many enterprises and consumer users are in a precarious position. It seems inevitable that organizations must pull off a Herculean feat of migrating all their desktops within months or they will have to pay for extended security updates to stay on Windows 10, which can be costly.
Why is Adoption so Slow?
The reasons organisations have been slow to adopt Windows 11 are varied. Windows 11 has some new hardware requirements that did not exist with Windows 10. Primarily, the requirement for a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) or vTPM plus a need for UEFI and Secure Boot enabled. It was believed these would not be major blockers for enterprises as most processors released in the last few years support vTPM. Also, most enterprises have moved from BIOS to UEFI years ago and Secure Boot has been an option available for some time – but some enterprise and consumer devices are not compatible with Windows 11.
This issue is further exasperated for enterprises who typically adhere to strict hardware refresh cycles. The pandemic forced organisations to purchase laptops for employees to support work from home, throwing off their refresh cycles and budgets, as they may not have factored in buying Windows 11-ready hardware until 2025 or 2026.
Another major change with Windows 11 is the fact this is the first Windows desktop OS that is 64-bit only. This presents a challenge for certain enterprises, particularly those with the legacy applications that contains 16-bit code or those with hardware peripherals that do not have drivers compatible with 64-bit. Generally, application compatibility should be less of an issue than in previous migrations but it is not guaranteed that you will face no compatibility issues. This can make desktop migrations time-consuming and intensive work, the kind of which may require hiring outside help from consultants. At a time when there is hyperinflation this kind of intensive work that requires many billable hours from consultants may be too costly for some budgets.
Upgrade Now To Avoid Future Expenses
Regardless, now is the time for organizations to act to avoid paying for Extended Security Updates. This raises the question, what can enterprises do to ensure they never have this pressure and need to rush or pay for extended security updates again in future?
Even though it might be tempting to try to do in-place upgrades to Windows 11 and hope for the best, I suggest you leverage your Windows 11 migration to truly modernise how you manage desktops, increasing portability and flexibility across desktop platforms to make future migrations a breeze. The fact of the matter is, it is harder to implement meaningful change for your desktop experience when in a steady state. For example, replacing your endpoint security product in product in one fell swoop can be disruptive to operations. If you make this change as part of your Windows 11 rollout, it can be seamlessly weaved into your employees new desktop experience – of which they will expect to experience change.
The biggest opportunity for modernization is by modernizing Windows application management. If you can dynamically deliver applications to any Windows desktop, future Windows migrations become an overnight experience.
Your Solution
The most challenging aspect of a migration is the applications. It is inevitable you will run into applications that won’t work on Windows 11. In some cases, this may be due to an issue the vendor knows about and they won’t support running the application on Windows 11, in other cases you may have an application that the vendor has certified to run on Windows 11 but you may have introduced something in the way you package or deploy the application that prevents it from working on the new OS.
If you take this time, to package your applications into a modern format such as an application container you can ensure the applications can continue to work on future Windows Operating Systems and you can have confidence that applications can be dynamically delivered making future migrations streamlined to the point it can be an overnight experience. Modernise your Windows today and reap the benefits in future to not only expedite OS migrations but even provide flexibility to migrate to different desktop types such as cloud desktops.
If you would are on your journey to Windows 11, check out our Windows 11 migration guide linked with this video, head over to Numecent.com for more information and of course be sure to follow us more great videos.