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Windows 7 posts enterprise gains, but XP retains 60% share

21.06.2011
Although enterprises are in the midst of migrating more machines to Microsoft's Windows 7, the aged Windows XP still accounts for nearly 6-in-10 PCs in corporations, according to a recent report by research firm Forrester.

Windows 7 powered nearly 21% of all business PCs used to reach Forrester's Web site in March, the most recent month for which the firm has data.

While that's more than double the 9.5% logged by Windows 7 a year before, the 10-year-old Windows XP remains the most widely-used enterprise operating system by a wide margin: In March, systems running XP accounted for 59.9% of the 400,000 machines that visited Forrester.com.

Ben Gray, a Forrester analyst who co-authored the report on operating system and browser trends, called Windows 7's adoption "accelerating," but at the same time noted that XP retains a majority.

Windows XP is slated to exit all support -- meaning Microsoft will stop providing security updates, aka patches, for the OS -- in April 2014.

Gray was confident that the bulk of XP systems would be retired by then, replaced by new machines driven by Windows 7. "The majority of firms will move to Windows 7 during the next year as the extended support phase for Windows XP approaches," Gray wrote in the report.