“Evaluate Windows 8.1 for Broader Deployment”—Gartner Tells Businesses
“Evaluate Windows 8.1 for Broader Deployment”—Gartner Tells Businesses by UCStrategies Staff
Michael Silver and Stephen Kleynhans, vice presidents of client computing team at Gartner, Inc., offer several preliminary recommendations to business organizations about looking into deploying the forthcoming Windows 8.1 update.
“Based on information currently available, Gartner believes Windows 8.1 features could quiet most of its detractors,” wrote Silver and Kleynhans in a recent guest post.
It can be remembered that in May 2013, Forrester Research predicted that most businesses would not make Windows 8 their primary standard because the operating system would not get enough adoption. But it looks like the Windows 8.1 update is more enterprise-ready and could get a more extensive deployment, according to Gartner analysts.
Based on Microsoft’s announcements regarding the features of Windows 8.1, analysts at Gartner suggest that businesses should assess Windows 8.1 for broader deployment if Windows 8 has been considered only for touch-based devices. For businesses that avoid Windows 8 but favor adopting a new operating system through acquiring new PCs, then they should consider having Windows 8.1 on those new machines after completing testing, most especially with Internet Explorer 11. And for those in early planning stages of Windows 8 projects, they should “pilot on Windows 8 if it makes sense” but change to beta Windows 8.1 right after, then plan on using Windows 8.1 for production deployments.
Gartner expects “minor changes” to be implemented to the Windows desktop, which would be crucial to maintain compatibility with legacy desktop applications of Win32. Compatibility problems are more likely to be caused by switching from IE 8 to IE 11 than by Windows 7’s Win32 applications. Gartner says that business organizations will need to spend time in testing critical applications and to be familiar with vendor support policies.
The Gartner analysts also predict that Windows will come up with more updates like 8.1, possibly on a yearly basis.
Microsoft has unveiled some of the features of Windows 8.1, including the Start button, the ability of the OS update to boot to the desktop, and IE 11. The OS update is also touted to come with enhanced roaming settings due to better integration with consumer-focused SkyDrive.
Other features are not yet revealed by Microsoft, but it has been made known that Windows 8.1 will be released as a free update and will be shipped along with holiday device sales. (KOM) Link. Link.