Recent changes by Microsoft to the Windows 10 support schedule underline why Windows 10 Pro is an ill fit for most companies.

Windows 10 Pro is a dead end for enterprises, a prominent Gartner analyst has argued.

“[We] predict that Microsoft will continue positioning Windows [10] Pro as a release that is not appropriate for enterprises by reducing … support and limiting access to enterprise management features,” Stephen Kleynhans, a research vice president at Gartner and one of the research firm’s resident Windows experts, said in a report he co-authored.

Microsoft’s Windows 10 Pro occupies the middle ground between the consumer-grade Home and the corporate-level Enterprise in features, functionality and price. Because Enterprise versions of Windows have never been available to computer makers, Pro – sometimes, as in Windows 7, tagged Professional instead – has been the most popular pre-installed OS on new business PCs. (Corporations typically re-image new personal computers with Enterprise upon receipt of the devices.)

But although Pro or Professional has a long history in business settings, Microsoft has made numerous decisions in its Windows 10 migration campaign to separate Pro and Enterprise even more, pushing them apart. In Kleynhans’ view, the gap has become unbridgeable.

The last straw was Microsoft’s on-the-fly changes to Windows 10 support.

Last year, the Redmond, Wash. developer announced a six-month support extension for Windows 10 1511, the November 2015 feature upgrade, “to help some early enterprise adopters that are still finishing their transition to Windows as a service.” In February, Microsoft added versions 1609, 1703 and 1709 – released in mid-2016, and in April and October of 2017, respectively – to the extended support list, giving each 24 months of support, not the usual 18.

“Some customers have requested an extension to the standard 18 months of support for Windows 10 releases,” a Microsoft executive said at the time.

There was a catch: Only Windows 10 Enterprise (and Windows 10 Education, a similar version for public and private school districts and universities) qualified for the extra six months of support. Users running Windows 10 Pro were still required to upgrade to a successor SKU (stock-keeping unit) within 18 months to continue receiving security patches and other bug fixes.

Windows 10 Enterprise 1709, for example, and its free “supplemental servicing,” will exhaust support in October 2019. But Windows 10 Pro 1709 runs out of support on April 9, 2019.

“The one thing that really surprised me about the added support,” said Kleynhans in an interview, “was the fact that it didn’t apply to Pro. I think that this telegraphed the fact that, for businesses, Pro is being dead-ended.”

Even though the six-month support extension ended with the 1803 feature upgrade, the one that began reaching some users late last month, in the report Kleynhans co-wrote with Gartner colleague Michael Silver, the duo made clear that they believe Pro is viewed by Microsoft as a second-class citizen.

“Customers currently using Windows 10 Pro should continue to monitor Microsoft’s life cycle announcements because they will eventually need to budget for Windows [10] Enterprise as Windows [10] Pro becomes more ‘pro-sumer’ and small-business oriented,” they wrote in a six-item list of recommendations.

Another component of Microsoft’s current Windows 10 support strategy, something the company has labeled “paid supplemental servicing,” was also out of bounds for those running Windows 10 Pro. The extra support, which Microsoft will sell at an undisclosed price, is available only to Enterprise and Education customers.

Paid supplemental servicing adds 12 months to the 18 months provided free of charge.

“The extensions and paid support option only apply to the Enterprise and Education SKUs,” Kleynhans and Silver said in their report, “Plan and Budget for Short Windows and Office Support Cycles Based on Microsoft’s February 2018 Announcements,” which was published by Gartner last month. “Customers using Windows 10 Pro will still see support end after 18 months. In this way, Microsoft is further reinforcing that it expects enterprise customers to move to the Enterprise edition of Windows 10.”

The latest numbers from the company show businesses are close to schedule to move away from Windows 7 before the older OS retires in early 2020.

Windows10 Enterprise

Microsoft on Tuesday said that some 200 million enterprise workers now run Windows 10, a sign that corporations and other businesses are close to schedule to scrub Windows 7 from their machines before that older OS retires in about 20 months, an analyst argued.

“The 200 million resonates with me, based on what I’m hearing from clients,” said Stephen Kleynhans of Gartner Research. Migrations to Windows 10, he added, are progressing “pretty aggressively.”

Joe Belfiore, a corporate vice president who leads the Windows 10 team, revealed the number at Microsoft’s Build developers conference Tuesday. “Right now, there are over 200 million people in corporate accounts using Windows 10,” Belfiore said as he claimed deployment is “really ramping up” in the enterprise. “We’ve seen that [Windows 10] adoption rate increase now at 79% year-over-year growth.”

The day before, Microsoft contended that “nearly 700 million” devices are running Windows 10 worldwide. On that basis, enterprises accounted for less than 30% of all copies of Windows 10.

(Although the two numbers – Belfiore’s 200 million people using Windows 10 in corporate settings and Microsoft’s 700 million devices powered by the operating system – measured two different things, it’s not uncommon for Microsoft to obfuscate this way to prevent direct comparisons. In actuality, because Microsoft typically sells licenses on a per user basis, with multiple devices allowed for each user, 200 million people may be using more than that number of Windows 10 devices.)

While neither the percentage nor the 200 million are to be sneezed at, the former is significantly less than the average overall for commercial PCs, which have historically accounted for more than half – 55% has been an often-cited figure – of all personal computers.

And while Kleynhans did not dispute Microsoft’s claim of 200 people running Windows 10 in the enterprise, he sounded a bit disappointed in the number. “Is it a low number? It’s a little behind where I thought it would be,” Kleynhans said, noting that he expected it to be around 250 million by this point, perhaps even close to 300 million.

That 2009 operating system will fall off Microsoft’s support list on Jan. 14, 2020, meaning that while Windows 7 will continue to work as before, the Redmond, Wash. will stop distributing security updates to it.

It’s unrealistic to expect that all commercial customers will have purged Windows 7 by the retirement date, Kleynhans said, pointing out that he has recently spoken with clients who still run some instances of Windows XP (retired from support in 2014) and even Windows 98 (2006).

“What we [Gartner] expect is that enterprises will get to the 85%-90% level by the deadline,” Kleynhans said of the percentage of corporate devices shifted to Windows 7, “maybe even a little higher than that.” Nothing that’s happened has changed that estimate, he added.

“There are always laggards,” Kleynhans said.

According to other metrics, there may be a considerable number of them.

Estimates from analytics vendors, including U.S.-based Net Applications, which measure user and usage shares, signal that a large resorvoir of Windows 7 users will remain after the operating system’s retirement in 20 months. Net Applications’ latest data, for example, drove a Computerworld forecast that of the world’s Windows personal computers – all the PCs, not just those in the enterprise – 42% would still be running Windows 7 in January 2020, a much larger percentage than the 29% powered by Windows XP when that edition fell off the support list in April 2014.

In the end, large organizations will do what it takes to get off Windows 7 and onto Windows 10 by the former’s support cut-off date. The 200 million touted by Belfiore this week will be quite different a year from now, Kleynhans was certain.

“The speed with which I see Windows 10 moving now, it’s not going to be an issue,” he said.

Windows 10 deployment is, like previous iterations of the OS, on a timetable not of its own making. Instead, because of the vagarities of Microsoft’s historical release schedule and corporate acceptance (or rejection) of some editions, there is a clock ticking on Windows 10 because of the impending retirement of the current corporate standard, Windows 7.

Have questions?

Get answers from Microsofts Cloud Solutions Partner!
Call us at: 856-745-9990 or visit: https://southjerseytechies.net/

South Jersey Techies, LL C is a full Managed Web and Technology Services Company providing IT Services, Website Design Services, Server Support, Network Consulting, Internet Phones, Cloud Solutions Provider and much more. Contact for More Information.