With 47% of companies set to upgrade in the next 12 months, Microsoft says Windows 10 deployment is accelerating

When the free upgrade offer to Windows 10 expired in the middle of last year we saw a significant flattening of the growth curve for the OS, with the Windows 10 installed base seeming stuck at around 400 million PCs, and Microsoft not announcing any new numbers to suggest otherwise.

It seemed most consumers who wanted to (and some who did not) have already decided which OS they wanted to run, and the next big growth driver would be the notoriously slow-moving enterprise segment.

Now according to a survey by CCS research 86% of firms surveyed stated they would upgrade their Windows PCs to Windows 10 within 3-4 years, with a full 47% of those saying they would do so in the next 12 months.

The news is somewhat consistent with the old rule of thumb that companies wait for the second service pack to jump in, with the Creators Update being the second big update to Windows 10.

They survey was performed in October 2016 and polled 400 mobile technology decision-makers in the US and four European countries about their purchasing preferences for enterprise mobility and digital workplace products.

In a blog post on Technet Corporate VP of Microsoft Enterprise Client & Mobility (ECM) team Brad Anderson endorsed the results, saying their own telemetry showed a significant acceleration in the rate of Windows 10 deployments (presumably in enterprise) worldwide.

With Windows 7 already out of mainstream support, and expected to go out of extended support in 2020, it seems well past due time for enterprise to jump in.