Microsoft could be getting some more business in the New Year.
The business technology colossus debuted Windows 10 in 2015, and now counts 400 million computers running the operating system, according to Microsoft (MSFT).
However, businesses have been slow to upgrade all of their corporate computers to the latest Windows OS in 2016, according to research by IT services and technology company Adaptiva.
Adaptiva said Tuesday that based on its findings, it believes companies are going to be upgrading to the latest version in 2017. Adaptiva based its findings from a survey it conducted over the summer of 300 IT professionals at various businesses.
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The company said that 41% of the companies it surveyed have been avoiding the upgrade, and some “have gone so far as to actively resist the move by using software to prevent or disable Windows 10 installation.” The survey didn’t say why exactly companies were avoiding the upgrade, but the majority of respondents that did upgrade “rated the Windows 10 migration process to be somewhat to extremely challenging,” the survey said.
Additionally, the survey explained that although companies believe Windows 10 is high-quality software, internal business software compatibility “remain(s) as large barriers to Windows 10 deployment.”
But apparently, things will be brighter in 2017 when it comes to Windows 10 adoption, with Adaptiva saying that 64% of the survey respondents plan to move to to the new OS in the coming year. The survey didn’t specifically cite a major reason for the increase of Windows 10 adoption, but presumably it is because some businesses felt they could no longer avoid the upgrade.
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If businesses decide to stick with older versions of Windows, Adaptiva predicts that Microsoft could encourage adoption by through measures like reducing support for the older Windows versions. That’s the stick, but the carrot of discounts related to Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing business service or Office 365 work productivity software could work just as well.