Windows7 Enters Extended Support Period
Selling more than 20 million licenses per month in the three years it was officially being marketed, Windows 7 is clearly the winner of “most popular Windows OS.” If even 50% of those licenses are still operational, that means the world has more than 360,000,000 PCs running Windows 7. So what does it mean that this week it moved from mainstream support to extended support? For most users, it means nothing. For many IT departments, the extended support deadline of January 14, 2020 punts the support ball far enough down the field that they hope they don’t need to deal with it.
In reality, this move to extended support signals yet another sign that IT departments are too dependent on Microsoft to determine when software licenses are migrated. Just this past April, Windows XP’s support expired. While not in as wide deployment Windows 7, it is still the platform of record for many of the most business critical enterprise applications running today. The announcement sent waves of IT professionals into planning mode for either a major OS exodus or panic as problems became manifest in the post-Patch Tuesday era.
IT needs to take the reins back from Microsoft. OS migration needs to occur when it is right for the company, not when new preinstalled devices are purchased or support agreements make it inconvenient to operate a group of PCs.
While Windows Management can mean many different things, at Moka5 we see it as the creation, deployment, and updating of a containerized Windows workspace. As anyone who has ever managed Windows in a large company knows, it is not simple, straightforward, or user-friendly. Moka5’s customers have found that by using Moka5 as the foundation for managing Windows image creation, distribution and deployment, Windows workspace management is easier and more efficient.
By utilizing the Moka5 container, IT is able to keep all Windows workspaces on the same version of Windows – or deploy multiple containers with different Windows versions on the same computer. So you could run an XP app in a container alongside your Windows 7 desktop and a third container running a Windows 8 application or Windows 10 beta. This not only provides unparalleled flexibility and control but also reduces the overall management costs of maintaining multiple versions. In addition, for basic Windows desktop administration, Moka5 enables the updating of hundreds or thousands of Windows desktops by managing a single Windows image. Because of Moka5’s layered container technology, IT is able take advantage of single image management while allowing users to personalize their workspace without loss of privacy or compromising overall manageability or security - even when users are remote or on the road.
To learn more about how Moka5 helps IT manage all aspects of Windows desktops better, as well as the benefits our customers are seeing, complete the form below to download the Containerization for Optimized Windows Management whitepaper.
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