IT leaders scramble as Windows 10 deadline nears

When Microsoft’s regular support for Windows 10 ends on October 14, BSH Home Appliances will still have 6,000 Windows 10 computers that haven’t migrated to Windows 11 — but that’s all part of the plan, says Serhiy Mamus, global head of workplace services at the European appliance manufacturer.

“We have 43,000 laptops and desktops, and all but 2,500 of the company’s office computers have been migrated,” he says.

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BSH Home Appliances

By October, all but 500 of the remaining office PCs will have been upgraded or replaced. The rest will remain on Windows 10 and go on Microsoft’s Extended Security Updates (ESU) program because they don’t meet the Windows 11 minimum hardware requirements, they run applications not yet certified for Windows 11, or they run mission-critical applications connected to industrial devices on the shop floor, he says.

Another 5,500 Windows 10 machines that serve as production data collection devices on the manufacturing floor will continue to receive security updates until 2029 under BSH’s Windows Long-Term Servicing Channel License. By then, Serhiy says, Windows 12 might available, allowing BSH to skip Windows 11 altogether for those machines.

“It doesn’t make sense to do the migration twice,” he says.

Jeff Martinson, 2nd VP, infrastructure and operations at Ameritas, began migrating 3,100 Windows 10 instances installed on laptops, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), and Azure Virtual Desktop instances back in 2023. The project is now 93% complete, and he expects to have everything migrated before October.

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Ameritas

Supportability and security were key factors driving the upgrade, he says, but it’s taken time to upgrade or replace machines that lack the processing power, memory, or Trusted Platform Module version 2.0 chip required by Windows 11.

“Older hardware not supporting the TPM 2 chip was our largest blocker,” he says.

A last-minute scramble

For many IT organizations, the transition to Windows 11 is coming down to the wire.

“Many organizations are balancing multiple initiatives and waiting for the right moment in their device lifecycle or broader IT strategy,” says Stefan Kinnestrand, VP Product Marketing at Microsoft, who oversees Windows commercial marketing.

But businesses have also been slow to upgrade to Windows 11, which was released nearly four years ago. “Unlike with the migration from Windows 7 to Windows 10, there was no compelling business reason to upgrade,” says Paddy Harrington, senior analyst, security and risk at Forrester. “Anecdotally, adoption hasn’t been great until as of late.”

That’s especially true at small and midsize companies, says David Mayer, CEO at IT services and consulting firm Endpoint Technology Partners.

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Endpoint Technology Partners

The delay comes down to “a real lack of financial ROI associated with the upgrade,” Mayer says. “The increase in performance, security, management, and so on doesn’t produce a big enough impact to justify the cost of getting new or upgraded hardware and the disruption of doing the migration. Windows 11 migration hasn’t been a conscious thought for them.”

Companies also faced the opportunity cost of distracting the IT, security, networking, and application teams with a Windows 11 migration rather than having them focus on projects with greater benefit to the business.

“When you have 10,000 PCs, a Windows 11 migration is a massive project that happens over a year or more,” Harrington says. That’s one reason why many organizations have put off migrating for as long as they could, and now they’re scrambling to beat the end of support deadline.

As for current adoption rates, Microsoft’s Kinnestrand says, “While I can’t share specific numbers, what I can say is that we’re seeing strong momentum with Windows 11.”

Among Forrester’s clients, “one third of organizations are done, one third are rushing, and one third are holding until they can get new, Windows 11-compatible hardware,” Harrington says.

At Endpoint Technology Partners it’s more like 50/50. “Across our customer base, 50% are done and the other 50% are at various stages. There are also folks who are going to take this up to the last minute,” Mayer says.

Going forward, Harrington says, “You’ll see a slow trickle to full adoption.”

Windows 11 has its advantages

Windows 11 does have some attractive features, particularly for IT admins. “Microsoft pushed some configuration controls, introduced better app control functions, and added its own version of the Linux sudo command so you don’t have to be an administrator to do app installs anymore,” Harrington says.

And admins can use Windows Autopilot to quickly get misbehaving machines in order, says Mayer from Endpoint Technology Partners: “If a machine is not doing what it’s supposed to do, you can just blow it away and reload it, and in two or three hours all of the junk is gone. That’s a pretty big user upgrade experience.”

From the end user’s perspective, the only thing they seem to notice when moving to Windows 11 is that the Start button has moved from the left corner to the middle of the screen, he adds. “But Windows 11 is better at managing resources, it feels a little faster if you have a machine that’s properly configured, and it’s a positive step forward in terms of management and security,” he says.

Minimum hardware requirements are not enough

While every organization has machines that don’t meet Microsoft’s minimum hardware requirements for Windows 11, many machines that meet that minimum won’t necessarily perform optimally with Windows 11. “Will Windows 11 run in 8GB of RAM? Sure. But your users won’t like that experience,” Mayer says.

Similarly, computers with spinning disks are likely to experience subpar performance with Windows 11. “The user experience is not great if you don’t have SSDs,” he says. In addition to an SSD, Endpoint Technology Partners recommends at least 16GB of RAM, a TPM2 chip, and an eighth generation or higher Intel chipset.

The TPM 2.0 module, which became standard in most devices around 2018, “anchors the OS’s security posture in hardware, not just software,” says Lucas Ebron, solutions advisor at IT services firm Portland Internetworks. “Machines built before then often don’t have it, and at that point, it’s time to consider a broader refresh anyway.”

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Portland Internetworks

Before embarking on a migration, organizations should review how much hardware should be replaced or upgraded for the best user experience, not just what meets the minimum requirements. “You may find that you’re facing a huge hardware purchase,” Mayer says.

Portland Internetworks has a similar recommendation. “Our recommended spec for general administrative use is 16GB of RAM, an Intel i7 or higher CPU, and 256GB SSD for laptops — or an Intel i5 with 16GB of RAM and 512GB SSD for desktops,” Ebron says. “But due to a mix of factors — budgets, user availability, and supply chain or inventory issues — some clients just aren’t in a position to complete a full system refresh before the October deadline.”

Microsoft’s ESU program offers a temporary bridge, he adds. “We’ve already started to receive ESU orders, and as we get closer to October 14, we expect a wave of last-minute requests from teams still catching up.”

Some application software is still playing catch-up

While Microsoft says that 99.7% of Windows applications are compatible with Windows 11, noncompliant applications continue to be a problem for some organizations, especially in the SMB space.

“The challenge comes with legacy or custom software that requires upgrades or new licensing. It’s rarely the OS. It’s the ecosystem around it that needs modernization,” says Ebron.

“There’s a massive number of one-off application vendors that aren’t fully compatible, and they are sometimes difficult to work with,” says Mayer. “Many of these custom-written apps just don’t work well with Windows 11. Half of these custom-written or poorly written apps just don’t work” and represent “a massive long tail of technical debt” that will likely take years to get through. For those apps, he says, organizations may need to find workarounds or replace the apps entirely.

BSH was fortunate in that it had few issues with application compatibility. Mamus’ team started the migration process just over two years ago with a “test factory” where it checked all of its system images to ensure they would work with Windows 11. “Out of 1,000 applications, we found a few that needed to be adjusted, but it was just a matter of changing a few settings,” Mamus says.

That doesn’t surprise Forrester’s Harrington. “There aren’t that many differences with Windows 11 from Windows 10 at its core, so apps shouldn’t be that much of an issue. But will you have some [that aren’t compatible]? Of course you will.”

Mamus thinks up-front testing is critical. “Although the vast majority of our apps worked on Windows 11, it’s still important to spend time, resources and money to run tests to avoid problems,” he says.

Migration options and alternatives

For machines still running Windows 10 on October 15, IT managers will have to decide whether to pony up $61 per machine for ESUs — a cost that doubles to $122 in 2026 and $244 in 2027 before ending completely — or assume the risk associated with not having security updates. (ESUs for educational institutions start at just $1 per license for the first year.)

“On the security side, most modern security tools will pick up on the flaws that are targeted at Windows 10 systems even if you don’t have extended support,” Harrington says, but most organizations won’t want to take that risk — especially organizations that must meet regulatory compliance requirements.

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Forrester

Ultimately, Harrington says, “organizations that are security conscious will get extended support. But plenty of enterprises will take the risk,” he predicts — especially if they expect to finish Windows 11 migrations by early next year.

Businesses have several options when deciding where and how to migrate to Windows 11. Machines that don’t require internet connectivity might be able to forgo ESUs if they stay offline. For machines running noncompliant apps, IT can upgrade those machines and move the noncompliant apps into a Windows VDI session. “Most VDI vendors will continue to support the Windows 10 agent for a period of time,” Harrington says.

Instead of replacing noncompliant hardware, this might also be a good time to consider moving users to thin clients and VDI, assuming the costs of doing so are less than for replacing or upgrading and migrating noncompliant machines to Windows 11. While costs have risen with some providers, others with lower cost offerings, such as Omnissa, could help to make the math work, Harrington says.

It may also be possible to move Windows apps over to VDI if Windows machines are mostly accessing cloud-based web and SaaS apps through a browser. “Thirty percent of enterprise users use a browser for everything, and 50% are doing the majority of their work in the browser,” Harrington says.

In such cases, IT may be able to give users a thin client OS — such as the ChromeOS Flex or IGEL Secured OS — or move them to Linux, which has a similar look and feel to Windows, and forgo Windows entirely at the endpoint.

For Portland Internetworks’ clients, however, migrating to Windows 11 is the most likely outcome. “There are short-term workarounds like VMs or VDI, but we guide clients toward best practices: upgrading hardware and apps to ensure a secure, supported Windows 11 environment,” Ebron says.

Expect a smooth transition — if you’ve prepared

“With the right planning and support, the move to Windows 11 can be seamless,” Microsoft’s Kennestrand says — and based on reports from some organizations that have migrated, that appears to be the case. Once hardware and application compatibility issues have been identified and resolved, IT leaders say, the actual transition has gone well.

“I’ve been in IT for more than 20 years, and this was one of the easiest migrations I’ve seen,” says BSH’s Mamus. Some devices required more time to complete the upgrade, but complaints from the business have been minimal, he says.

Endpoint’s Mayer says most Windows 11 transitions his firm has overseen have been a success. “As a general rule, rollouts have been fairly smooth, with the usual exceptions for hardware and software compatibility,” he says.

Nonetheless, you should plan for things to go wrong. “Every OS upgrade will have a problem somewhere in your infrastructure,” Harrington says, because there are always systems you don’t know about.

Ultimately, says Ameritas’ Martinson, the key to success is to start the process early. But with less than 90 days to go, many organizations are now having to make up for lost time.