14 DAY TRIAL // Windows XP will be officially retired in April 2014, but companies and end users are yet to make the move to a newer Windows platform, according to recent market share figures.
Ovum principal analyst Roy Illsley thinks that many users will migrate to Windows XP only a few months before the retirement date, but some will prefer software-as-a-service (SaaS) products instead of the traditional applications.
“There are some cases where [SaaS] will be used as a way of mitigating a massive cost and people won’t really look into the true cost of doing it,” he told TechRepublic.
“If people are saying, ‘Actually, we’re going to use Office 365,′ that’s a great piece of work that they don’t have to test.”
As a result, services such as Office 365 and other cloud-based products are very likely to experience a significant market share next year, especially because, on a regular basis, Microsoft recommends users to dump Windows XP.