Microsoft  's launch of Windows 7 on Thursday promises to have a far bigger impact on the enterprise space than the software giant's release of Vista, according to industry observers. The good news for Microsoft this time around is that businesses have far more incentive to upgrade.
"Windows XP won't be around forever, and the anticipation for commercial adoption of Windows 7 is reaching a boiling point," notes Forrester Research Senior Analyst Benjamin Gray in a new report. However, application compatibility testing and remediation can take up to 18 months for global organizations that support thousands of applications worldwide, which is why "IT professionals should start preparing for it now," Gray said.
Test Batch Rollouts
Recent surveys indicate that the majority of businesses are still running Windows XP, which has been around since the beginning of the decade. A new Forrester survey shows that Windows XP still powers almost 80 percent of all commercial PCs.
However, Microsoft's support for XP service pack 3 will no longer be available free after July 2010. What's more, the extended support phase of both Windows XP SP2 and SP3 "will end on April 8, 2014, and new security updates and patches will no longer be released," Gray said.
The Forrester analyst is advising IT departments to either begin or accelerate application-compatibility testing with the Windows 7 RTM code. They also should plan to roll out Windows 7 in small batches on new hardware initially, Gray said.
The good news is that Softchoice recently conducted an analysis of more than 450,000 corporate PCs in which it found that 88 percent support the minimum system requirements for Windows 7. Moreover, 65 percent of corporate computers will be able to run Windows 7 in its optimal configuration, the technology-services provider noted, whereas only six percent of corporate computers were capable of running Windows Vista in its optimal configuration when it was released.
Gray says businesses need to weigh the costs and benefits of upgrading existing machines with at least 2GB of memory. "Start developing training sessions and tips and tricks guidance, and prepare for -- and embrace -- empowered users who want to be early adopters," Gray said.
An OS Sea Change
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