The second most popular operating system in the world after Windows 7 will see its last on 8 April, 2014. After this date, Microsoft will stop offering any technical support, i.e., it will not release any patches or regular security updates. This will pose a serious threat to the XP users worldwide making the global network vulnerable to security threats. And the most affected among all will be the business firms as continuation of the decade old OS will expose organizations to greater cyber-attacks.
Microsoft has already started urging its users to migrate to a different OS before it ends support and users still using Windows XP after that date will be running “unsupported software”.
According to statistics, Windows XP which came out in 2001 accounts for 38.7% of the PCs around the world. The cost of upgrading hundreds or thousands of laptops or desktops in business firms to a new operating system will cost huge time and money. Not only this, organizations running XP on significantly older machines also needed to check for hardware compatibility issues for running Windows 7/8. And if there are applications they cannot do without, then there is possibility that such organizations will continue running XP at their own risk.
Despite this, studies reveal that 42% of the companies have started the migration process and 36% have completed over 75% of the migration process and the rest are yet to begin due to lack of budget and resources.
Again the rollout has been announced at a perfect time when Microsoft will release its Windows Blue. However, Microsoft rolled out a Get2Modern financial incentive program where Microsoft offered a 15% discount to those firms upgrading from Windows XP Professional machines to Windows 8 Pro and Office Standard 13.
