The cloud, legacy IT and your Windows of opportunity
In 2018, 73% of organisations have at least one application or a part of their organisational computing infrastructure in the cloud. By 2020, this is predicted to grow to 83% of workloads being cloud-based.
As the statistics show, cloud computing is at an all time high. However, it is not yet omnipresent in the enterprise. Many organisations still prefer to operate on older versions of Windows and Office, causing cloud growth rates to stall as it takes longer for those organisations lagging behind to migrate to the cloud.
According to NetMarketShare , Windows 7 remains a hair’s width ahead of Windows 10 as the most used operating system by version (38.89% vs 38.14%, respectively). Despite being released almost 10 years ago, it’s understandable that Windows 7 remains such a prominent operating system. It is still more than capable of running business operations smoothly, and organisations have several other pressing financial needs they must consider like staff costs, insurance, invoicing and payment delays. These distractions leave the matter of upgrading IT far down the list of priorities, especially if organisations still have preconceptions around the time, cost, and security implications of a cloud migration.
However, Windows 7 End of Support (EOS) will coincide with Windows 7 being superseded by Windows 10 as the most popular operating system by version. It’s at this point where Microsoft will discontinue support for Windows 7 and organisations still running the operating system (OS) must consider how they can upgrade their IT and, more importantly, shift their organisation to the modern desktop.
The vision for your future workplace may, at present, seem hazy – obscured by the matters of migrating your files and users to the cloud, finding new hardware, and ensuring data security. This eBook looks to demystify these areas, explaining why and how organisations should make the shift to a modern desktop with Windows 10 and Microsoft 365 on Surface devices – not only to overcome Windows 7 EOS but to gain all the benefits of the cloud without the hassle of a migration.
