Mainstream support for the now-aging operating system ends on June 30th, but many firms aren’t ready to move to XP.
Administrators and managers may not want to hear it, but Windows 2000 is reaching the end of its supported life. According to a report from AssetMetrix, Windows 2000 does still feature greatly in many enterprises.
Windows 2000 dropped only four percentage points, from 52 to 48 percent, in its popularity in corporate IT environments. Windows XP gained big, going from 6.6 percent to 38 percent. These changes were between the third quarter of 2003 through the first quarter of 2005.
The report calls for IT managers to better plan their upgrades from obsolete operating systems.
Steve O’Halloran, managing director of AssetMetrix Research Labs, said: “Companies re-deploying PCs, without a policy to manage and support their operating systems, will have their Windows XP transition rate dictated by PC obsolescence rather than by intelligent planning and forecasting.”
The continued presence of Windows 2000 in so many enterprises may not be a function of planning. Rather, as many companies consider IT to be a cost center, upgrading hasn’t reached a point of urgency.
Unless a typical tight-fisted company has to have its staff on an updated platform to support a needed business application, it isn’t likely to spend the money and time on upgrading until it has to do so.
Bigger companies seem more prone to keeping Windows 2000. In the study, AssetMetrix found that businesses with fewer than 250 employees were more likely to be running Windows XP already.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
