Microsoft India today announced that more than 80% of PCs in large enterprises in India have successfully moved away from Windows XP, thereby reducing the risk to their operations.
“We want every PC in India to move away from Windows XP before support ends on April 8, 2014. Our customers use Windows operating system to run critical processes which help them at work and in their lives. Therefore, it is important that they use a version of Windows that gives them the best possible security and capability,” said Karan Bajwa, Managing Director, Microsoft Corporation India Pvt Ltd.
With 28 working days left for businesses in India to secure their IT environments and migrate from Windows XP to a higher version, Indian enterprises have shown significant momentum in adopting Windows 7/ Windows 8. In the last eight months, there has been large scale migration from Windows XP to Windows 7/8. However, there are still about 16% of large enterprise computers that are active on Windows XP which pose a significant security risk to their organizations.
With end of support for its Windows XP solution kicking in on April 8, 2014, 12 years after it first launched, Windows XP computers will be a lot more vulnerable to security threats. “This is a genuine threat to Indian businesses and it is worrying to see that many organizations in critical industries, for example banking, aren’t moving quickly enough,” added Bajwa.
As per the bi-annual Security Intelligence Report published by Microsoft in H2 2013, Windows XP installations are six times more likely to be infected by malware than Windows 8 machines. It is therefore important that organizations with critical systems such as state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and the banking and financial services companies (BFSI) migrate to modern versions of Windows Operating System.
In addition to concerns over security, companies that do not upgrade will also face increased IT and maintenance costs. According to a report by IDC in 2013, companies continuing on Windows XP post April 8, 2014, will spend three times more on support and maintenance of their IT than those that will migrate to newer platforms.
Furthermore, continued reliance on Windows XP will have an impact on customer service and bottom line profitability.
