The IT industry has always been one of rapid change and upheaval, with many technology companies only lasting as long as they could innovate for. This is at odds with the traditional way businesses operated, preferring to stick to predictable cycles and seek gains through incremental improvements in process, procedure and marketing. The eventuality of this came in the form of the traditional 3~5 year cycle that many enterprises engaged in, upgrading the latest available technology usually years after it had been released. However the pace of innovation has increased to the point where such a cycle could leave an organisation multiple generations behind and it’s not showing any signs of slowing down soon.

Windows 8.2 Start Bar

I mentioned last year how Microsoft’s move from a 3 year development cycle to a yearly one was a good move, allowing them to respond to customer demands much more quickly than they were previously able to. However the issue I’ve come across is whilst I, as a technologist, love hearing about the new technology the customer readiness for this kind of innovation simply isn’t there. The blame for this almost wholly lays at the feet of XP’s 12 year dominance of the desktop market, something which even the threat of no support did little to impact its market share. So whilst the majority may have made the transition now they’re by no means ready for a technology upgrade cycle that happens on a yearly basis. There are several factors at play with this (tools, processes and product knowledge being the key ones) but the main issue remains the same: there’s a major disjoint between Microsoft’s current release schedule and it’s adoption among its biggest customers.

Microsoft, to their credit, are doing their best to foster rapid adoption. Getting Windows 8.1 at home is as easy as downloading an app from the Windows store and waiting for it to install, something you can easily do overnight if you can’t afford the down time. Similarly the tools available to do deployments on a large scale have been improved immensely, something anyone who’s used System Center Configuration Manager 2012 (and it’s previous incarnations) will attest to. Still even though the transition from Windows 7 to 8 or above is much lower risk than from XP to 7 most enterprises aren’t looking to make the move and it’s not just because they don’t like Windows 8.

With Windows 8.2 slated for release sometime in August this year Windows 8 will retain an almost identical look and feel to that of its predecessors, allowing users to bypass the metro interface completely and giving them back the beloved start menu. With that in place there’s almost no reason for people to not adopt the latest Microsoft operating system yet it’s likely to see a spike in adoption due to the inertia of large IT operations. Indeed even those that have managed to make the transition to Windows 8 probably won’t be able to make the move until 8.3 makes it debut, or possibly even Windows 9.

Once the Windows 8 family becomes the standard however I can see IT operations looking to move towards a more rapid pace of innovation. The changes between the yearly revisions are much less likely to break or change core functionality, enabling much of the risk that came with adopting a new operating system (application remediation). Additionally once the IT sections have moved to better tooling upgrading their desktops should also be a lot easier. I don’t think this will happen for another 3+ years however as we’re still in the midst of a XP hangover, one that’s not likely to subside until it’s market share is in the single digits. Past that we administrators then have the unenviable job of convincing our businesses that engaging in a faster product update cycle is good for them, even if the cost is low.

As someone who loves working with the latest and greatest from Microsoft it’s an irritating issue for me. I spend countless hours trying to skill myself up only to end up working on 5+ year old technology for the majority of my work. Sure it comes in handy eventually  but the return on investment feels extremely low. It’s my hope that the cloud movement, which has already driven a lot of businesses to look at more modern approaches to the way they do their IT, will be the catalyst by which enterprise IT begins to embrace a more rapid innovation cycle. Until then however I’ll just lament all the Windows Server 2012 R2 training I’m doing and wait until TechEd rolls around again to figure out what’s obsolete.

About the Author

David Klemke

David is an avid gamer and technology enthusiast in Australia. He got his first taste for both of those passions when his father, a radio engineer from the University of Melbourne, gave him an old DOS box to play games on.

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