Windows 7 Migrations: Tips for Getting the Timing Right

CIO - Seventy-five percent of commercial PCs are still running Windows XP, says a recent Windows 7 Adoption Outlook report by Forrester Research analysts Benjamin Gray and Christian Kane. That's not only a sign of XP's impressive longevity, but also a sign of how stagnant the PC market has been for years.

But finally, the times are changing, as noted by the report's survey that includes nearly 800 IT decision-makers: 46 percent of firms expect to migrate to Windows 7 within the next 12 months and 42 percent expect to do it in more than 12 months.

Now that Windows 7 is a proven commodity and its security, networking and virtualization features are better known, the reasons for deploying Windows 7 are moving beyond the general need (computers are old, XP is old) to the desire to use more specific Windows 7 enterprise features such as BranchCache, DirectAcess and BitLocker to Go, according to the Forrester report.