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Windows 10 Pro Is a Dead End For the Enterprise, Gartner Says (computerworld.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the not-fully-supported dept.

A prominent Gartner analyst argues that Windows 10 Pro is a dead end for enterprises, citing recent changes by Microsoft to the Windows 10 support schedule. "[We] predict that Microsoft will continue positioning Windows [10] Pro as a release that is not appropriate for enterprises by reducing [...] support and limiting access to enterprise management features," Stephen Kleynhans, a research vice president at Gartner and one of the research firm's resident Windows experts, said in a report he co-authored. Computerworld reports: Last year, the Redmond, Wash. developer announced a six-month support extension for Windows 10 1511, the November 2015 feature upgrade, "to help some early enterprise adopters that are still finishing their transition to Windows as a service." In February, Microsoft added versions 1609, 1703 and 1709 -- released in mid-2016, and in April and October of 2017, respectively -- to the extended support list, giving each 24 months of support, not the usual 18. There was a catch: Only Windows 10 Enterprise (and Windows 10 Education, a similar version for public and private school districts and universities) qualified for the extra six months of support. Users running Windows 10 Pro were still required to upgrade to a successor SKU (stock-keeping unit) within 18 months to continue receiving security patches and other bug fixes.

Another component of Microsoft's current Windows 10 support strategy, something the company has labeled "paid supplemental servicing," was also out of bounds for those running Windows 10 Pro. The extra support, which Microsoft will sell at an undisclosed price, is available only to Enterprise and Education customers. Paid supplemental servicing adds 12 months to the 18 months provided free of charge.

8 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. Any version of 10 is a dead end for enterprise by Indy1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    forced OS upgrades, which often breaks the registry, poor control over Windows Updates, Windows update showing App store bullshit back onto the box even after you've removed it, etc.

    Only the LTSB enterprise version is usable, and even that gets annoying.

    --
    Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
    1. Re:Any version of 10 is a dead end for enterprise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

      Never heard of WSUS or GPO or...much of anything apparently. Who did you buy your low ID from?

    2. Re:Any version of 10 is a dead end for enterprise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Given that Windows 7, which is now 8 years old, works perfectly fine and Windows 10 offers nothing that is substantially better, 24 months of support is absurdly short. And requiring non-business users to change their operating system every 6 months is beyond absurd.

      What make all of this so completely ridiculous is that Microsoft gets 99% of its Windows revenue from sales to OEMs who install Windows on the computers they sell. If Microsoft never released anything new, and just kept patching Windows 7 (fix bugs, fix security holes as they are found, add support for new hardware) they would still have guaranteed sales of a couple hundred million copies every year.

      Nobody rushes out to buy a new OS because of its "new features".

      I just can't figure out how they think this clusterfuck called Windows 10 is a good idea.

  2. Customer Service by Zorro · · Score: 2, Insightful

    What do they expect if they continue to screw their customers?

    1. Re:Customer Service by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What do they expect if they continue to screw their customers?

      It has been a successful business model for Oracle, and before that, IBM.

      The tech company has a long history of entrenched players who can no longer innovate screwing over their customers until a new player comes along.

      And Microsoft is definitely an entrenched player who can no longer innovate -- in fact, I'm hard pressed to think of innovations from them they didn't outright buy or copy from someone else. Well, there's the Registry ... but I'm not sure I'd call that pile of shit an innovation of any merit.

      Honestly, the only way to use Microsoft these days is on a VM with no access to the outside network. Anything else, and you've given up control of your servers to someone else.

  3. Re:Holy crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Microsoft is known for having a large warchest..however they have been making terrible decisions for a long time now and linux is starting to eat their milkshake with a straw. I'd imagine that warchest is shrinking with each passing year, and with it they make cutbacks to their PR and marketting. The desperation of putting advertisements into their product along with spying on their users makes me think their warchest is a hell of a lot smaller than we know of, people with money don't hussle broke ass folk hussle, and microsoft is acting like a broke ass street hustler.

  4. Re:Pro vs Enterprise by Gojira+Shipi-Taro · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why the fuck would I SUBSCRIBE to an operating system?

    --
    "Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
  5. Re:Pro vs Enterprise by rahvin112 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Only problem is that microsoft's long term plan for windows is software as a service with a monthly cost just like office 365. They are going this way hell or high water on both enterprise and retail.

    That is what Windows 10 represents, anyone still using it enabling this and giving microsoft confidence that it's got a winning strategy and the fanboi's won't see it until it arrives. By 2020 you will be putting in a credit card number and paying a monthly fee to use windows. It's just about the only way Microsoft can soak more money from the system and grow non-cloud revenues.