200 million enterprise PCs run Windows 10, but hundreds of millions need to upgrade by 2020

At Build 2018 this week Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore announced that around 200 million enterprise users use Windows 10, saying:

“Right now, there are over 200 million people in corporate accounts using Windows 10,” saying deployment is “really ramping up” in the enterprise.

While a significant number, at around 30% of Windows 10 users, it is clear that companies are still somewhat avoidant of the OS. Normal numbers are closer to 55% of PC users.

There is however a hard deadline coming, with Microsoft ending support for Windows 7 in 2020, meaning no more security updates.

Stephen Kleynhans of Gartner Research believes this will lead to a rush to upgrade over the next few years.

“What we [Gartner] expect is that enterprises will get to the 85%-90% level by the deadline,” Kleynhans said of the percentage of corporate devices shifted to Windows 7, “maybe even a little higher than that.”

According to Belfiore this rush has already started.

“We’ve seen that [Windows 10] adoption rate increase now at 79% year-over-year growth,” Belfiore noted at Build.

The numbers suggest that Microsoft may eventually make it to their billion Windows 10 PC number, if some years later than they predicted, but it of course remains to be seen if the company hits Satya Nadella’s other goal – that of having people loving the OS, not just being forced to use it to get work done.

Via computerworld.com.au