IT cos to continue with XP after 2014 withdrawal

By siliconindia   |    1 Comments
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Bangalore: Even as Microsoft will withdraw the support of Windows XP operating system in April 2014, many of the companies still plan to keep using the nine year old operating system. In a study carried out by Dimensional Research, 48 percent of firms asserted that they will continue to run XP even after Microsoft retires the OS in the summer of 2014. Diane Hagglund, Senior Analyst, Dimensional Research said, "IT just really, really likes the XP operating system. They say it's just that good, and don't want to mess with it." The study surveyed more than 950 IT professionals on their preference of Windows and Microsoft adoption plans. The poll results reveal that 47 percent of the professionals claimed they would not adopt the XP and would go for the newer Windows even before the XP is retired. However, 48 percent claimed they would continue using XP sans support. Microsoft will discontinue supporting Windows XP on April 8, 2014 after it issues the operating system's final set of security patches. Among the companies that said they would use the XP without the support included a majority of financial services and manufacturing companies, shared Hagglund. However, she added, “For all their talk, enterprises don't plan on running XP forever, only for some time after the 2014 support cutoff. I think six months or so after Microsoft ends support, they'll really quickly upgrade [to a newer Windows] as they realize the systems are vulnerable because they've not been patched.” On its part, Microsoft has been pushing its customers across all dimensions to upgrade to Windows 7. Of the companies surveyed, 38 percent reported a partial roll-out of Windows 7 while six percent have fully installed Windows 7. The quick adoption of the Windows 7 OS is a reason cited by Microsoft for its better-than-expected quarterly earnings numbers. Peter Klein, Chief Financial Officer, Microsoft said, "Companies [are] adopting Windows 7 ... at historically high rates." The Windows division of Microsoft posted 10 percent more revenues in the third quarter as compared to the same period of the year before.