For an operating system that made its debut 12 long years ago, there’s still a lot of love out there for Windows XP. With support for the old OS ending on April 8, 2014 however, Microsoft and its partners are striving mightily to convince reluctant businesses to transfer that love to a new beau.
It was a major topic at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in July, when the vendor armed partners with with tools, marketing messaging and incentives to capture what it sees as a $10 billion global opportunity: move the legacy commercial install base still running Windows XP to a modern and supported Windows OS before support ends, and businesses are vulnerable to exploit and other threats.
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“Windows XP is a 12-year-old OS,” said Reshma Sinha Roy, director of Windows 8 marketing. “It’s an OS we all love and it was great for its time, but today we need to move on.”
Some critics though say Microsoft is playing Chicken Little, countering the sky won’t really fall when official support ends, and an upgrade to a “modern” Windows, either 7 or 8.1, may not be a necessity for every business. They are talking about it though – a recent article on ITBusiness.ca on the topic elicited a bevy of responses from skeptical SMBs.
Recently, ITBusiness.ca’s Brian Jackson put some of the comments from Windows XP-living SMBs to Steve Heck, the CIO of Microsoft Canada. He attempts to bust some “OS migration myths” in the video above.
Seems they are forgetting the consumers. You ask 20 people [non-techie] and very few will know that XP support dies in April. I’ve asked some Microsofties on why they aren’t warning consumers and got no response.