Research by VMware, a virtualisation and cloud infrastructure company, has revealed that 94% of organisations have still not migrated all of their devices from Windows XP, despite the fact that Microsoft will stop offering support for the operating system on April 8th 2014.
The research, which was conducted Vanson Bourne and sponsored by VMware and Dell in October of this year, found that only 34% of the IT decision makers planning to migrate remaining Windows XP devices before April next year, said they were "extremely confident" that they would be fully migrated before the deadline.
It surveyed 250 IT decision makers across both private and public sector organisations in the UK.
36% of respondents said that are "not even close to having the migration complete" and a fifth are only partway through. Those who are planning a migration, or are already in the process, 79% said they will migrate their devices to Windows 7, but only 35% said they plan to migrate to Windows 8.
Microsoft has announced that after April 8th 2014, it will no longer provide security or technical updates, or bug fixes for Windows XP. This means that computers that are still using this operating system after April 8th could be vulnerable to security threats such as viruses.
After April 8, 2014, Microsoft has announced that it will no longer provide security updates, technical updates or bug fixes for Windows XP. Desktops and laptops running on the operating system may be vulnerable to security threats, including hackers and viruses. The research, conducted by Vanson Bourne and sponsored by VMware and Dell,
When it came comes to those businesses that had completed migration, the research among CIOs, IT directors and IT managers also showed that while 75% were able to complete their migration in less than a year, a quarter took more than a year to migrate off of Windows XP. This means that organisations need to start planning their migration, so they can update before the deadline.
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David Parry-Jones, regional director, UK and Ireland at VMware commented on the survey: "The most notable thing about this research isn’t just how few companies have fully migrated from Windows XP to date, but how many business-critical applications there are still in operation that will only run on XP. These business-critical applications related to finance, sales or customer relationship management can affect the bottom line, potentially disrupt operations and damage the reputation of organisations."
