Windows 10 Deployment Will Be ‘The Speediest Yet’

Windows 10 is set to be the most popular version of Microsoft’s software ever as more and more businesses begin rollout over the coming months.

Estimates from Gartner predict that 50 percent of organisations will have started Windows 10 deployments by January 2017

This puts Windows 10 well on track to reaching Microsoft’s goal of installation across one billion devices.

Growing

Earlier this month, data from industry observers Netmarketshare estimated that Windows 10 now claims 7.94 percent of the total PC operating system market.

Gartner offers several factors that it says are helping drive migration to Windows 10, most notably a growing awareness of Microsoft ending support for Windows 7 in January 2020, strong compatibility of the new software with Windows 7 applications and devices, and a growing demand for tablet and 2-in-1 device rollouts from an increasingly mobile workforce.

All of this is leading many organisations to begin planning initial trials of Windows 10 in the first half of 2016, before rolling out a wider deployment later in the year, as they look at completing their migrations in 2019.

Read More: Windows 10 Review

“In the consumer market, a free upgrade coupled with broad legacy device support and automatic over-the-air upgrades ensures that there will be tens of millions of users familiar with the operating system (OS) before the end of 2015,” said Steve Kleynhans, research vice president at Gartner.

“For businesses, we expect that implementation will be significantly more rapid than that seen with Windows 7 six years ago.”

A recent TechWeekEurope poll showed that 75 percent of readers plan to download Windows 10, which has been greeted by a strong critical response.

The first major update to Windows 10 was released last week, providing a wide range of user interface and software improvements, including updates to some of the most popular apps such as Messaging and Skype.

It also included the option of coloured title bars for desktop apps, improved context menus, and an extra column of Live Tiles for the Start menu.

What do you know about Windows 10? Try our quiz!