Interview Enterprise plans for the end of Windows 10 should already be well underway, but some sectors are lagging, and there are other potential time bombs for administrators to worry about, according to asset management outfit Lansweeper.
Working out exactly the proportion of Windows devices running version 11 versus Windows 10 is tricky. Microsoft doesn’t share its telemetry, yet Lansweeper’s data, which is derived from approximately 8.5 million Windows 10 and 11 devices, can provide insight into the state of the enterprise world.
The figures vary wildly by sector. According to Lansweeper, transport and logistics leads the update wave, with 61.2 percent of devices running Windows 11, compared to 38.8 percent on Windows 10. At the other end of the scale, healthcare has only 33.5 percent of devices on Windows 11, while 66.5 percent remain on Windows 10.
“In a lot of scenarios, it comes down to regulation, and difficulties with regulation, specific software only being approved for specific operating system versions,” Esben Dochy, a principal technical evangelist for SecOps at Lansweeper told The Register.
“Things like that have to go through a very long change management system where they have to approve the new operating system to test it.”
Dochy reckons there is every chance that Windows 11 could account for 70 percent of devices overall by the time October 14 rolls around. In some scenarios, it might dominate. In others, it might not.
Not that unsupported Windows 10 machines will suddenly stop working on that date. Many administrators won’t apply the final patch until it can be thoroughly checked. The quality of code emerging from Redmond in recent years has necessitated a prudent approach. As a result, some organizations might argue they have a few more weeks or even months after the end date.
“You could argue, indeed, that you have another month,” said Dochy.
“Yes, you could argue that for the organizations which run on a month delay, or have a few weeks of delay to ensure that their patches don’t break anything. So you can start making some excuses, but it’s really not ideal to do that.”
Dochy calls the apparent slowness of the healthcare sector “troublesome.”
“It’s the only industry where you’re not just worried about machines being down and revenue being lost, it’s where human lives are at stake. They have a lot of catching up to get to Windows 11, or let’s hope they all have plans in place to run those Windows 10 systems with an ESU or something similar.”
Dochy is also concerned about Office, and the impending end of life of some versions “that might fly under the radar.” Office 2016 and 2019 are due to reach end of support at the same time as many versions of Windows 10.
The good news for administrators is that Dochy doesn’t think that Microsoft will force such a big change on customers in the near future.
“One of the main things that really sets Windows 10 and Windows 11 apart is those additional hardware requirements,” he said. “Those barriers will not be in place when it comes to updating to newer versions of Windows 11.”
And the future?
Dochy can’t see what additional hardware barriers a hypothetical Windows 12 might throw up, based on information available today. Even Microsoft’s obsession with all things AI may not translate to specific requirements for Windows. “It’s very uncertain,” he told us. “It’s not certain that there’s going to be some sort of requirements for AI going forward.” ®