The soon-to-be-retired Windows XP may technically be the second most popular operating system in the world, but a sweeping look at the business side of things may paint a different pictures.
An overwhelming majority of enterprises, institutes, organizations and companies are running the OS.
This was revealed in a new study conducted by VMWare in October, and the numbers are actually quite astonishing. Around 94 percent of the organizations surveyed are still running the ancient platform, and equally interesting is the fact that only 34 percent have upgrade plans in place.
Vanson Bourne undertook the study, sponsored by VMWare and Dell, and from the look of it businesses have, on average, 24 applications that are only compatible with Window XP. This obviously makes the move to a newer platform all the more difficult.
As David Parry-Jones, the regional director, UK and Ireland at VMware noted:
“The most notable thing about this research isn’t just how few companies have fully migrated from Windows XP to date, but how many business-critical applications there are still in operation that will only run on XP.
These business-critical applications related to finance, sales or customer relationship management can affect the bottom line, potentially disrupt operations and damage the reputation of organizations.”
The survey also revealed that 36 percent of IT managers admitted that their move to a newer platform is far from being complete. Some 79 percent of these are transitioning to Windows 7, while 35 percent are looking at Windows 8.
Microsoft continues swaying users and businesses away from Windows XP, but it is becoming increasingly clear that the software titan has a colossal task at hand — April 8, 2014 is very much here.
All Comments
I don’t believe VMware when they talk about Microsoft, I just don’t.
Ha!
I am very glad to say that my organization does not run anything on XP.
Its interesting how much of XP you see running around different businesses. In fact i find this quite alarming. What many security experts expect to happen is that many malware/ virus developers are currently holding back their latest work, and finding holes in all the latest patches released from Microsoft. Their reasoning behind this is quite sensible, why would they release malware for exploits if Microsoft could patch them, they would rather wait until Microsoft will refuse to patch them when support ends. As soon as support ends for XP, it will simply become a massive vulnerability and companies are risking exposing sensitive client information in what one can only label as neglect on the companies side to invest in IT infrastructure.