14 DAY TRIAL // Now that Windows 8 is already on the market, Microsoft’s biggest challenge is to convince users to abandon previous Windows versions and migrate to this new OS build.
Although it’s 11 years old, Windows XP remains one of the most popular Windows versions out there and it still runs on millions of computers, despite Microsoft’s announcements that it would soon stop offering support for it.
That’s why Microsoft wants partners to help it kill Windows XP completely. Speaking at Tech Data's TechSelect conference in Puerto Rico, Long Tran, Microsoft's director of technology strategy solutions for SMB, said that partners could really make a lot of money if consumers were convinced to dump Windows XP in the favor of Windows 8.
"There are over 200 million copies of XP out there. It's over 10 years old," he said, according to CRN. "There is no lower hanging fruit than Windows XP [upgrades]."
This isn’t the first time, however, when Microsoft emphasizes that Windows XP should be abandoned as soon as possible.
The company has already issued several announcements claiming that XP isn’t a secure working environment anymore, so making the move to Windows 7 or Windows 8 is the best choice of all Windows consumers.
“We recommend that customers running computers with Windows XP take action and update or upgrade their PCs before the end-of-support date. If Windows XP is still being run in your environment and you feel that migration will not be complete by April 8, 2014, or you haven't begun migration yet, Microsoft is eager to help,” Microsoft explained in a newsletter released last month.
In addition, Microsoft executives say the same thing with every single occasion: dump Windows XP and move to a newer Windows as soon as possible.
“Windows XP and Office 2003 were great software releases for their time, but the technology environment has shifted,” Stella Chernyak, a Microsoft marketing director, explained.