Many organizations, especially those in industries with government oversight or compliance requirements, require applications to be officially supported by the independent software vendor (ISV) and/or go through validation processes to ensure compatibility. Such organizations may find skipping Windows 8 for most devices makes sense.

The biggest compatibility issues in terms of applications not working will continue to be those that require specific releases of Internet Explorer (IE).

Microsoft will improve the migration process — it will become easier and more reliable to upgrade PCs in place from an older to a newer version of Windows.

 However, Windows 8 may be the baseline required for more agile application management and upgrades, and improved processes and tools will not resolve the ISV support problem.

We recommend that organizations select one of the following three options for dealing with their PC OS platforms through the remainder of this decade:

1.     Deploy Windows 8 on new PCs as they arrive, thereby phasing Windows 7 out over time as PCs are replaced — this may make sense for many organizations. 

2.     Skip Windows 8 and plan to deploy a future version of Windows (perhaps Windows Threshold or even a release after that) to replace Windows 7 — we believe most organizations will do this. With this strategy, many will not eliminate Windows 7 before support ends unless they budget extra funding to do so.

3.     Deploy Windows 8 on all PCs to eliminate Windows 7 — for most organizations, we see little value in doing this, and do not recommend it without a solid business case.

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