This article is more than 1 year old

Windows 10 pilot rollouts will surge in early 2016, says Gartner

Takeup will be ‘significantly more rapid than seen with Windows 7’

The first six months of 2016 will see an upsurge in pilot rollouts of Windows 10, Gartner has predicted.

Many enterprises will then broaden their deployments later in the year with Gartner expecting at least half to have started some form of production deployment by the beginning of 2017, and looking to complete migrations in 2019.

That will help Windows 10 become Microsoft’s most widely deployed operating system, following in the footsteps of Windows 7 and Windows XP, Gartner said.

That may, or may not, be what Microsoft wants to hear. Windows XP and Windows 7 both became de facto client standards and getting customers to move onto succeeding versions of Microsoft's software has proved nigh impossible.

Microsoft’s declared goal is for Windows 10 to be on one billion devices in the next two to three years. Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella claimed in October that 110 million devices were running Windows 10.

Factors driving the uptake of Windows 10 on the consumer side are the free, 12-month upgrades, plus the availability of broadband connectivity for devices, making over-the-air downloads a reasonable feat to perform.

According to Gartner, factors driving migrations include the planned end of support for Windows 7 in January 2020 plus strong application compatibly with Windows 10. That, plus pent-up demand for tablets and two-in-one devices, will drive uptake.

“There will be tens of millions of users familiar with the operating system before the end of 2015,” research vice president Steve Kleynhans said in a statement.

“For businesses, we expect that implementation will be significantly more rapid than that seen with Windows 7 six years ago,” he added.

Windows 10 was released by Microsoft in July; as far as receiving free Windows 10 is concerned, complaints have emerged among some Windows 7 and 8 users that rather than the upgrade being voluntary Windows 10 is forcing itself onto their PCs. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like