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23 Jul 2010
Microsoft, which announced its second-quarter financial earnings today, coupled the news with the revelation that it has reached a milestone in Windows 7 sales.
The number of Windows 7 licences already dished out to purchasers numbers 175 million, according to the firm. This means, the firm explained, that Windows 7 is now operating on more than 16 per cent of the world's PCs.
Apparently the operating system is selling at the rate of seven copies a second - Microsoft said "more than" seven a second - making it the fastest selling operating system in the firm's history.
Although it may be tempting to assume that this is all down to new consumer purchases, Brandon LeBlanc, Windows communications manager, said that the firm is also starting to see the operating system take hold in enterprises.
"The PC 'refresh cycle' for businesses has accelerated, and we recorded the second straight quarter of double digital business licence growth," he explained.
Microsoft will end support for Windows XP in 2014, a factor likely to lead to more sales, according to analysts at Gartner, who this week commented that the cost of migrating from XP to Windows 7 in large organisations could be as much as £1,360 per PC.
LeBlanc said that, as well as increasing sales of Windows 7, the firm had also won more favour with Internet Explorer 8, which he called the "fastest growing and most popular web browser in the market" quoting figures from Net Applications.
All this is helping to contribute to strong revenue gains at the firm, which announced its best ever second-quarter earnings with net income increasing by 48 per cent year on year to $4.52bn (£2.93bn).
Windows 7, along with Office 2010, was credited for much of the growth.
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Automation can reduce the cost of Windows 7 migration
It?s encouraging to see such a high level of Windows 7 adoption. However, it is likely that some businesses are delaying the upgrade due to the associated high costs of migration. A simple way to off-set this expense is to reduce the time taken to roll out Windows 7 through automation. There are tools readily available that can quickly, easily and reliably automate the migration process of any new operating system, including Windows 7. Whether that is using discovery tools to automatically identify any incompatibilities with existing IT assets or accelerating the testing and deployment phases through the use of a central management system. The latter can swiftly deploy any patches or hotfixes needed in the future. This reduces the operational costs of the infrastructure as well as the burden on the IT department dramatically. - Matt Fisher, Director, FrontRange Solutions
Posted by: Matt Fisher, Director, FrontRange Solutions 29 Jul 2010