Last week, a client asked us to come in to help install two new printers in their office. Like several other customers, they are running Windows XP. And they are not alone. According to NetApplications, Windows XP is still 45% of the Windows marketshare by versions. Now more than 10 years old, I was curious why they continued to use this operating system, even though Microsoft has since released two Windows products since then (Windows Vista and Windows 7). And, this fall, Microsoft is believed to be releasing the next version, Windows 8. After hearing their answers and thinking about other customers, I was able to put together a list of reasons for sticking with decade old technology. In a follow-up post, I’ll discuss why it’s time to start the migration to one of the newer operating systems.
1) Don’t change what isn’t broken: Company managers days are full of priority items. The computer systems work fine for their needs, and they believe their users’ needs as well. There is enough to fix elsewhere in the organization, so the operating system sits low on the priority list.
2) Cost: The cost of updating a new operating system is significant. Companies consider the deployment, system upgrades, troubleshooting and training when calculating the budget. The software itself is just one component of the overall cost, and may be one of the smaller costs.
3) Legacy software: Existing data systems are not compatible with the new operating systems. Updating an existing database or other company-wide tool to work properly with the new operating system is believed to be costly. Also, worries about data-corruption during the migration color the decision-making process.
4) The “Vista Effect”: The legacy of Vista will haunt Microsoft for years to come. When Vista followed Windows XP in the Microsoft operating system product line, it brought many changes in the user interface, network connectivity and data management. By themselves these features would impact a company’s IT systems. However, Vista came with a host of problems including incompatibility with existing software, driver availability and inadequate malware protection. Having encountered these problems in the past, many IT managers are reluctant to upgrade their operating systems, and those that do wait for the first Service Pack (SP1) when all the bugs are believed to be sorted out.
As I will show in the next post, there are a number of reasons companies need to seriously consider their operating system strategy. Not the least of these issues is Microsoft’s plan to stop issuing security patches for Windows XP.
In the comment section below, let us know what operating system are you using and why do you use it?
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