Dublin; 30th January 2019: Irish business has less than 12 months to upgrade from Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system to 10 or face potentially serious cost issues and security threats, according to a new report by Irish owned IT services company Auxilion.
Microsoft has announced that support for Windows 7 will end on 14 January 2020. Extended support will be available beyond this date but at a cost and with the price increasing each year. (1)
“If organisations haven’t upgraded by this time next year, then they face the cost of extended security support offered by Microsoft or leave themselves open to the risk of running an unsupported operating system with resulting security threats,” commented Martin Patterson, head of digital services, Auxilion.
Latest figures from analytics firm StatCounter finds that in Ireland nearly 30% of internet access was via Windows 7 in December 2018. (2)
“This percentage is likely to be significantly higher for corporate users as consumers have adopted Windows 10 much faster than business,” added Martin Patterson.
He said that many public sector organisations also face significant costs. Because of its stability, Windows 7 has been a favoured operating system across the public as well as private sectors. It has been reported that the UK Government had to pay Microsoft £5.5m (€6m) to support Windows XP for an additional year.
He said that for cost and security reasons, migration to Windows 10 is not something that should be put on the long finger.
“Depending on the size of the organisation, migration can take 12 months or longer.”
According to Gartner, average migration projects for large enterprise organisations with more than 500 seats have been taking 21 months in the US. (3)
The Auxilion Windows 10 migration guide also warns that organisations that are slow to react may face a capacity issue in the Irish IT support sector. “Businesses will have to take their place in the queue and those starting after mid-2019 will probably have to face the prospect of not having the project completed by 2020.”
