Survey Reveals Over Half Of Organizations Are Still Running Windows XP

Friday, August 01, 2014

Adaptiva, a leading, global provider of add-ons for Microsoft’s System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) conducted a survey with over 100 attendees at Microsoft TechEd North America 2014 conference. The survey revealed that 53% of organizations are still running the decade old Windows XP OS. Over 25% of them are concerned about security while 15% had purchased extended support from Microsoft.

Why are they reluctant to move? The biggest reason to migrating from Windows XP was application compatibility (29%), followed by time (15%), cost (4%), and user training (2%). Respondents also showed stronger than anticipated adoption of Windows 8, with 17% moving to Windows 8 or a mixed Windows 7+8 environment.

Nearly half (43%) of respondents represent companies with more than 10,000 nodes (desktops, laptops, servers), including 13% with more than 100,000. Eighty percent of those surveyed were running Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) in their organization.
The greatest challenge holding companies back from automating OS migration is getting the task sequence right (31%), followed by the deployment of PXE servers in remote locations (28%). Twenty-seven percent considered WAN bandwidth their biggest obstacle, while 19% pointed to lack of storage at remote locations.
Although cloud adoption is accelerating rapidly in many areas, a shocking 81% of respondents said the cloud had no impact on their ability to upgrade and patch applications or migrate operating systems. Another 7% said the cloud is actually making it harder for them to perform these basic systems management tasks.