Can Microsoft win with Windows 8?

The much talked about, hyped Windows 8, the new Operating System from Microsoft, is finally here. Corporates have either formed special teams or have asked their CIOs to look at this OS and draw a roadmap for them to move on to it. They are in the process of understanding the challenges, financial and technical, involved in migration.

A good number of IT solutions and services firms have already begun work on Windows 8, weeks before the actual launch happened, and started doing test runs on client applications. IT firms have started creating ‘Golden Image’ (creation of a virtual master template that the companies can deploy on multiple machines) of Windows 8.

While it is a necessity for customers to latch on to it for improving productivity, it is a business opportunity to IT services provider, small and big, in the form of consultancy and implementation business.

For, they know sooner or later the clients will have to move to the new OS. The opinion, of the corporate and IT firms, is almost unanimous – there is no urgency to upgrade. There is no pressing need to shift. The fact that some customers are still working on Windows XP and that they could move directly to the new OS, bypassing Windows 7 that came by in the interregnum period.

It is not the question of time-to-migrate but significant costs that could deter the corporate to shift. An industry analyst has put the cost at $100-150 per migration of a desktop PC, including licence fee and service fee. The actual time required for migration is very minimal. It actually depends on the time required for taking data backup. Typically, it could take an hour for migration of OS in an average PC.

Microsoft says, it is imperative for corporate to shift as it supports the new needs and demands of computing. It can support newer productivity scenarios, driven by mobile platforms, continuous cloud, and proliferation of devices with minimal effort.

Advantage Win 8

What’s the killer advantage of Win 8? You should ask this question to some one managing and supervising personal IT gadgets of the employees. The new OS could easily assimilate the multitude of devices into the business environment, saving a lot of worry for IT administrators. Marrying the mobility to the enterprise environment is the biggest contribution.

The biggest advantage of Windows, a HCL executive says, it provides a dynamic and unified interface across desktop and mobile platforms that in future would translate into unified ecosystem across the computing network, encompassing static and mobile devices. It has minimum requirements with regard to hard disk, processor and RAM as in Windows 7.

“Majority of the migrations to Windows 7 from Windows XP happened in the last two years. There is no immediate need for them to shift,” Pravin Bolar, Vice-President (Infrastructure Management Services of Mahindra Satyam, says.

Pravin says the biggest opportunity for IT companies would be in the App (application) testing and remediation. Corporates need to test their existing Apps, which are at the heart of their core business, in the new OS environment. They, then, could offer consultancy services for the final migration.

He feels that the enterprises will have to move to the new OS some day as Microsoft could stop support to the previous versions after a few years. He, however, points out that there’s no dire need for enterprises to switch over.

According to him, there are two ways of doing it. The customers could shift to the new OS at one go. Or, they could do that when their licence expires or when they change their PCs. “The first method could cost them significantly, while the latter gives them an opportunity to stagger and minimize costs. Minimize, because they anyway have to buy a licence,” he points out.

Though the customers have a lot of time to shift, there are good reasons for them to acquire the new OS at least on the new PCs they might be buying – when they replace their old ones or when buy them for their expansion.

Microsoft argues that it’s easier for businesses to get connected and stay connected with Windows 8.

“It supports newer productivity scenarios, which includes BYOD (bring your own device), continuous cloud, proliferation of devices with minimal effort. It is a delight for IT managers at the back end and equally enrapturing at the front end,” Amrish Goyal, Director of Windows Business Group, told eWorld.

According to him, migration to Windows 8 is not that challenging at all. If the migration is from Windows 7, it will be very seamless as what works on Windows 7 will work on Windows 8 as well. “Thus, there are no issues,” he says.

But experts warn corporate against any lackadaisical approach. “Those who are thinking of migration to any OS should do a back-end check on costs involved, work estimate and deployment effort in addition to application inventory, technical readiness and the must have tools,” Maninder Singh, Senior Vice-President (End User Computing) HCL Technologies Infrastructure Services Division, observes.

HCL has readied a solution, XpressMigrate for Windows 8, to help enterprises seamlessly migrate to new OS.

Challenges

It, however, is not as quick as one thinks to move to the new OS, some experts feel.

“It is more application and cloud-centric than previous Windows OS XP and 7. The touch interface opens up the opportunity for several form factors in enterprises such as tablets and smartphones,” Maninder Singh says.

The most common challenges pertaining to migration of an operating system are Application compatibility, lack of skilled manpower, business downtime, loss of intellectual property during migrations, resulting in prohibitive costs of deployment.

Another important challenge for organizations that are migrating to Windows 8 is that ISV (independent software vendor who specialise in developing and selling niche software for businesses such as retail and automobile) support for application on Windows 8 will take 12 – 18 months to mature, the HCL executive points out.

>kurmanath.kanchi@thehindu.co.in