Gartner analyst Steve Kleynhans says IT staff should take all of 2013 to look at Windows 8 to evaluate it as the eventual standard for their company's use, but also to determine how to handle it as a BYOD candidate, which will likely come up as an issue much sooner, he says. "It could take off quickly like the and have a lot of users demanding to use it," he says.

Johnson says he thinks the chances of that are slim. "We don't think there will be a huge influx of Windows 8 devices," he says, citing Forrester research that says interest in and iOS devices is stronger among workers. "They have a large influence in choosing work tablets," he says.

Forrester research also indicates less interest in Windows 8 overall compared to interest in Windows 7 when it was about to launch. In 2012, 47% of respondents to a Forrester survey say they haven't looked at Windows 8 yet. Back in 2009 near the launch of Windows 7, that number was just 27%.

Just 24% say today that they expect to migrate to Windows 8 but have no specific plans while in 2009 49% expected to migrate to Windows 7. That leads Forrester to conclude that Windows 8 will largely be skipped as an IT standard.

That still leaves the question of dealing with Windows 8 being brought into work environments as personal devices. On the BYOD front, Johnson says one class of portable Windows 8 devices weighs in heavier than competing devices and because one version of Windows 8 runs on x86 processors, they don't have the battery life of portables such as iPads. Those factors may blunt the proliferation of Windows 8 machines as BYOD devices.