14 DAY TRIAL // Windows XP support will officially end in April and, even though statistics point to a 29 percent overall market share on the desktop, there are some countries where users are quickly dumping the aging platform for a newer and more secure one.
That’s the case of India, where 80 percent of enterprise PCs have already moved from Windows XP, according to a report published by The Hindu Business Line and citing Microsoft.
In fact, the local transition to a newer operating system is going so well that Redmond expects all Indian enterprise computers to move from XP by April 8, which is indeed possible, since many have already started the migration.
“We want every PC in India to move away from Windows XP before support ends on April 8. Our customers use Windows operating system to run critical processes which help them work and in their lives,” Karan Bajwa, managing director, Microsoft Corporation India, was quoted as saying by the aforementioned source.
“This is a genuine threat to Indian businesses and it is worrying to see that many organisations in critical industries such as banking are not moving quickly enough,” he added.
Microsoft India GM (Windows Business) Amrish Goyal also added that Microsoft would indeed continue to provide Security Essentials updates after April 8 for Windows XP machines, but that doesn’t mean that computers will remain protected thanks to this particular security product.
“We will provide some support after April 8, but it will not be for underlying vulnerabilities,” he explained.
“Of the 84 per cent PCs that migrated from Windows XP, about 25 per cent made the transition in the last 12-18 months. We expect that by April this 84 per cent will go up to 90 per cent,” he added.
Windows XP is a really tough nut to crack for Microsoft, as many users have already expressed their intentions to stick to this particular platform after end of support officially comes. At the same time, companies across the world are planning to continue supporting XP beyond this date, especially because many expect plenty of users to still run it for at least two more years.
Microsoft, on the other hand, warns that risks of staying on XP are growing, so it’s critical for everyone out there to start the transition to Windows 8.1 as soon as possible, just to make sure that their computers don’t get hacked due to unpatched vulnerabilities.