Walker White, the chief technology officer of Mountain View, Calif.-based BDNA Corp., is also seeing some of Gartner's advice in action through his own company. And a full 60 percent of Gartner poll respondents said their Windows 7 migrations are "well under way." "Windows 7 migration is the single biggest project for most organizations today," the research firm said. So far, it looks like many organizations are taking Gartner's advice. Gartner cites two more reasons organizations should forgo Windows 8 migrations for the time being: the current dearth of support from ISVs, and the impending end-of-life date of Windows XP, which Gartner says will likely arrive before IT is able to complete the amount of testing it will take to move to Windows 8. Like Windows 2000 and Windows Vista before it, Windows 8 - which Microsoft itself is touting as a "reimagining" of the Windows OS - falls in Gartner's plumbing category. Polishing releases are typically more stable and, as a result, are better sellers. The former are releases that include significant changes from previous versions the latter are releases that are designed to refine the changes in plumbing releases. That's because Gartner characterizes Windows 8 as a "plumbing" release, not a "polishing" release. "We really don't think Windows 8 will get significant traction as a PC OS in a corporate environment," Kleynhans said. On its face, Gartner's recommendation doesn't seem to bode well for Ballmer's "500 million Windows 8 users" prediction, at least from a business angle. "Get Windows 7 done, and then you can start to experiment and dabble with Windows 8, but don't let Windows 8 derail your Windows 7 upgrade project," Kleynhans said, noting that organizations should consider Windows 8 only as a "special project" - and only after they finish migrating to Windows 7. Instead, organizations still on Windows XP should move to Windows 7, advised Steve Kleynhans, a research vice president at Gartner. In a presentation held in late September titled, " Preparing for the End of Windows XP Is Windows 8 in Your Future?" the research firm made clear that for organizations that still haven't migrated from the more-than-decade-old Windows XP - which has its end-of-life date set for Ap- the answer to that question should be: "No."
Not if they're moving from Windows XP, according to Gartner Inc. It's a lofty prediction from the typically ostentatious Ballmer - but will companies bite the migration bullet? Ballmer reportedly predicted at this summer's Seoul Digital Forum that Windows 8 will have 500 million users worldwide by the end of next year. It might be too early to tell whether Windows 8 will be a coup or a bust among businesses, but CEO Steve Ballmer, for his part, is bullish.
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