We live in a mobile world - so why do only one-third of businesses use Windows 10?

Rob Miles and Andy Philp discuss the transition from Windows 7 to Microsoft's latest cloud-friendly OS

Windows 7 will reach its end of life in 2020, and despite the changing IT landscape, Windows still running at the heart of many organisations; moving away would be a bold move. However, the way in which we are working has changed, with workers increasingly basing themselves outside the office and using non-Windows devices. Windows 10 has been built with that world in mind. In Computing's latest web seminar we talked to Rob Miles, a University of Hull fellow, and Andy Philp from Vmware about why and how Windows 10 is supporting the modern office.

"Windows 10 is built for the mobile cloud," said Philp, "and it represents a real opportunity for businesses to think differently about how they provision, manage and deploy Windows to users."

Despite Windows 10's optimisation for mobile working, only 33 per cent of businesses use it as their main OS. Miles blamed this on Windows 8 (infamously built for mobile, not desktop, users first), which "poisoned the water for Windows upgrades." He believes that businesses are looking at Windows 10 and thinking that it will be as difficult to use as its predecessor, although that isn't the case: "Microsoft has to sell quite hard on the idea of putting a guy who's used to Windows 7 in front of a Windows 10 machine and he'll just get on with it." Philip added that Microsoft need to make sure that its clients realise that they're getting something new - not just a redesign of Windows 7.

One log-in to rule them all

Attendees agreed that one of the most important features of the mobile work world was 'single sign-on': "You really want to authenticate once and have everything supplied to you, whether that's virtual desktops, virtual apps, SaaS apps or mobile-native apps," Philp said. This ties in to the ID-centric, rather than device-centric, way of working, where a single log-in preserves your settings across devices: an in-built feature of Windows 10.

Philp pointed out that ID-centric is "great" for IT, because "if your role changes you can have that change automatically without having to go into the system - that's perfect...but from an IT perspective, if someone leaves the organisation you can then go to that identity and say 'You no longer have access.'"

While Windows is still the most common enterprise OS, the days of it being dominant are long-done. Research by Computing shows that 75 per cent of remote workers use a mixture of Windows and other operating systems, like Android; fewer than a fifth are now pure Windows users.

Miles said that Windows is now "more of a platform" for other programmes: "The OS is becoming much more incidental, really." Philp mentioned the trend away from the controlled, contrived work environments of the '90s and 2000s: "People are problem-solvers," he said. "They're used to being completely in control at home, and they want that experience in the office... It's very hard to say, 'You will only use Windows.'"

What about control?

A mobile world needs the management tools to support it. Traditional tools are mostly based on on-premise deployments, which means needing an infrastructure, a database and a management server; and servers in any remote locations to get file distribution working, which then need to be upgraded and patched - it's a very 'heavy' approach to management. "Teams form around just keeping SCCM and similar tools running," said Philp. Moving to newer tools like Vmware's Workspace One is "a bit like turkeys voting for Christmas: in some businesses, the fact that these old systems are process heavy and complicated sometimes works well for people that are in IT, because they want to be important and have a role - but more and more we're seeing businesses that realise, 'We need to be productive, we need to keep users out there and running,' and you don't want to be spending time and money keeping the lights of the management tools on."

When asked about their concerns around Windows 10, survey respondents listed both 'Training' and 'Support for legacy applications' as joint first. Training was a surprise to see so high, considering Windows 10's familiarity to regular Windows users; Philp thought that it might refer to training workers in how to safely work remotely (not joining free WiFi, etc). When it came to legacy apps, he was positive: "You can get around that now with application virtualisation; application publishing [running apps in a data centre and pushing them to thin clients]; and virtual desktops."

With the move to a cloud-based system, neither Miles nor Philp thought that hardware upgrades were as crucial as they have been in the past, and will continue to be of lower importance going forward.

Clearly, as we enter a virtual world all businesses will have the opportunity to upgrade and modernise their systems. Some valid concerns remain, but as Miles mentioned, "You'll find this a lot easier than you expect."

Computing will run its next web seminar on the 6th July, covering the topic of 'Threat lifecycle management - a six-point stage workflow plan'. Register now to attend for free.