More than 40% of organisations anticipate they will migrate to the new operating system within the next year

London, 29th October, 2009 – More organisations expect to migrate to the Windows 7 operating system within the next 12 months than previously predicted, according to research findings unveiled by ChangeBASE AOK today.  The survey of 163 Senior IT Decision Makers from large global organisations, conducted by eMedia, found that 41% of organisations are planning on making the migration within the next year, and a further 18% expect to make the switch within the next 2 years. These figures represent the highest predicted adoption rates for Windows 7 available to date.

According to respondents, the key benefits they anticipate from making the switch to Windows 7 include the ability to take advantage of the increased functionality (42%), increased security & compliance features (41%) and the improved look and feel (31%) of the new operating system.
 
Migration concerns
The ChangeBASE AOK research also identified the biggest challenges that Senior IT Decision Makers foresee in migrating to Windows 7. Two thirds (66%) of respondents believe that application compatibility issues will pose significant problems, and 40% believe that they will struggle to justify the investment for making the move. 39% also expect hardware compatibility issues will present problems during the migration process.

Whilst application compatibility issues are the key concern for many respondents, ChangeBASE and its partners have conducted over 20 Windows 7 compatibility assessments for global organisations, each with thousands of applications. The findings from these assessments show that around 20%-40% of applications are ready for Windows 7 and that 60-80% of a typical application portfolio will need some remediation to meet the deployment requirements for Windows 7. Only 5% of applications have a specific problem that needs to be addressed by the software vendor or programmer.

“It is encouraging to see that such a large proportion of organisations are planning to migrate to Windows 7 within the next 12 months in order to reap its benefits,” says Chris Hall, SCC UK Services. “However, ChangeBASE’s research indicates that many organisations still have concerns about application compatibility and our experience with our own customers mirrors these results. The good news for organisations is that the vast majority of application compatibility problems can be easily identified and fixed. By working with ChangeBASE, whose platform we've standardised our service on since its launch 2 years ago, we are able to not only report on the issues that a migration might cause, but also automatically fix the majority of these as well. As a result, we can now ensure that multinational corporations, mid-sized companies and public sector bodies in Europe can easily migrate to Windows 7 safe in the knowledge that application compatibility issues will be addressed quickly and cost effectively.”

“With Windows 7 now on the shelves, our research indicates that enthusiasm for making the move to Windows 7 is gaining pace,” says John Tate, Managing Director, ChangeBASE AOK.

“In the months leading up to the launch, Microsoft has made substantial efforts to ensure that existing applications work with Windows 7, but in the corporate space our research indicates that the biggest concerns around Windows 7 adoption is still application compatibility. Organisations shouldn’t fear the migration process. Whilst migrating to Windows 7 could present a number of application compatibility problems, these issues can be quickly addressed, and problems automatically resolved if the right steps are taken. If organisations prepare correctly, they can start to quickly reap the benefits of Windows 7, without suffering the pain that many previous migrations have caused.”

For further information on the ChangeBASE application compatibility assessment and remediation software please visit the ChangeBASE website at www.changebase.com.