Windows 10 migrations could mean shorter upgrade cycles, CDW's Kyle Davies warns

Every Windows 10 build is supported for just 18 months, shaking up traditional PC and endpoint support schedules

Organisations have just six months to migrate from Windows 7 to Windows 10 - and can expect a slew of exploits to materialise just days after Extended Support for Windows 7 stops on 14^th January 2020.

That's the warning from Kyle Davies, a distinguished architect with solutions provider CDW, advising attendees at the recent Computing Technology Forum.

And the way in which people use IT today has made managing the average endpoint IT estate more complicated, Davies warned, with users often using their own devices for some of their corporate computing needs - checking emails on smartphone, for example.

On top of that, managing Windows 10 estates will be very different from managing fleets of Windows 7 PCs and laptops.

Table (bordered)

Extracting more value from data (such as analytics)

38%

Enabling collaboration

37%

Redesigning processes

34%

Enabling access to real-time information

33%

Increasing automation

31%

Investing in training and certifications

30%

Reducing the complexity of security solutions

27%

Breaking down departmental and/or geographic silos

26%

Enabling better mobile access to applications and data

25%

^{Source: IDG/CDW}

"Most people are not working every day in a traditional office any more. They are hot-desking, working in the field, working from home or even going into coffee shops and working with a latte or cappuccino," said Davies.

In addition, while vendors talk about "anywhere, any time, any device", most organisations struggle to manage ‘any device', he added. "I say, just think about doing anywhere, any time working."

But making the move from Windows 7 to Windows 10 might be more challenging than many CIOs would assume.

Davies warned that a shift from Windows 7 to Windows 10 may also require upgrades to hardware to accommodate it, if not today, then perhaps following one of the ‘builds' released every six months. In other words, it could make traditional three-to-five year upgrade cycles less certain.

There's a 30 per cent to 40 per cent increase in CPU utilisation out-of-the-box with windows 10

In addition, the 18-month support life-span for each build of Windows 10 means that organisations will also need to be more proactive about Windows 10 support - Windows 10 isn't necessarily something that IT can roll-out and forget about once its' done, while continuing to manage endpoints in the same way that they have always done.

"There's a 30 per cent to 40 per cent increase in CPU utilisation out-of-the-box with windows 10. In another five years your current devices are not going to be fit for purpose - possibly within two years. From a VDI perspective it's even worse because you'll have invested £30,000 or £40,000 on servers to support it," said Davies. It's a similar story with disk read/writes, which may also have an impact on support, he added.

Organisations that haven't already shifted from conventional hard-disk drives to SSDs should also do this as part of their Windows 10 migration project.

Roll it out to all your users a day or week after the latest iteration of windows 10 and wait for your users to tell you something is wrong

Davies also warned that the old-style operating system implementations involving extensive testing of particular operating system images for months prior to roll-out have effectively been made redundant. Instead, he suggested, organisations should simply roll-out Windows 10 updates to a fairly uncontentious group of users first and see how they react. If there's no complaints, then move on to the next batch.

"Going ‘evergreen' means that you don't test your applications. The idea is that you roll it out to all your users a day or week after the latest iteration of windows 10 and wait for your users to tell you something is wrong. Roll-out to the lowest-impact users first. If there's no issues, then roll it out in stages to 10 per cent of your users at a time, then phase it in entirely a month or two later," said Davies

Ultimately, Microsoft wants to push enterprise customers to what it calls ‘modern management', using cloud-based device management solutions over traditional approaches involving Active Directory, Group Policy and System Center Configuration Manager.

However, a migration from Windows 7 to Windows 10 won't be transformational, said Davies, but tactical. "Understand user workflows and requirements. Get ‘personas' - speak to users and, when you roll out their new work methodology, they will be familiar with it," advised Davies.

There may be some issues with some staff in terms of familiarity with the user interface, but a bigger issue for major corporates will be the in-house stills and capabilities to support the shift. Here, added Davies, a chat with the reseller may help as, especially at this late stage, they will have conducted many Windows 7 to Windows 10 migrations already.

After all, Windows 10 has now been out for four years - and there's just six months to go before Extended Support for Windows 7 stops entirely.

Missed the recent Computing Technology Forum? Check out Computing's dedicated events portal