Windows 10: Analysts say Indian enterprises won't jump, will wait and watch

The Windows 10 launch with availability in in 190 countries beginning today is big news, but Indian enterprises don’t seem to be biting yet. This even though Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro are available for business customers as a free upgrade for genuine Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 PCs and tablets. “Windows 10 can be a viable operating system for tablets and smartphones, and is good for consumer and business requirements. It is definitely better than the previous operating system,” said Vishal Tripathi, research director, Gartner India. “But, when it comes to enterprises, they will adopt ‘wait-and-watch’ strategy,” he added. [caption id=“attachment_2368228” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Windows10[/caption] Tripathi’s reasons that many Indian organisations have recently moved from XP to Windows 7 and that they need compelling reasons to upgrade. Besides cost, security, compatibility, and manageability are some of the things that will be taken into consideration. “Earlier it was just the EA (Enterprise Agreement), but with Windows 10 prices are being split, and enterprises will have to go for the additional SA (Software Assurance) so that they can keep getting regular updates,” explained Tripathi. Greyhound Research CEO Sanchit Gogia said that according to their research about 70 percent of 150 organisations surveyed across Asia Pacific were not going to explore Window 10 for the next 2-3 quarters because these organisations have just moved to Windows 7 or Windows 8 in the last 6-12 months. “Windows 10 comes with device management, Azure Active Directory support, enterprise apps management and Windows 10 management support. So there are things that Microsoft is offering for free. But companies will still have to see how much money, time, manpower they will have to invest in migration,” Gartner’s Tripathi added. Tripathi also felt that while companies with Windows 7 can plan for migration to Windows 10, if they have Windows XP deployed than Windows 7 is a better choice. “Organisations do look for the stability factor. Windows 7 has been there for quite some time, and Microsoft is also providing support till 2020, so Windows 7 is more established system in the enterprise. Even if they are willing to make a move then they need compatibility test and so many other things, and I see that taking about 6 months to almost year. Before that, we don’t see Windows 10 uptake in Indian enterprises.”