Windows 10 Pro is a dead end for the enterprise, Gartner says

[Karlston]

Recent changes by Microsoft to the Windows 10 support schedule underline why Windows 10 Pro is an ill fit for most companies.

Microsoft

 

Windows 10 Pro is a dead end for enterprises, a prominent Gartner analyst has argued.

 

"[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.

 

Microsoft's Windows 10 Pro occupies the middle ground between the consumer-grade Home and the corporate-level Enterprise in features, functionality and price. Because Enterprise versions of Windows have never been available to computer makers, Pro - sometimes, as in Windows 7, tagged Professional instead - has been the most popular pre-installed OS on new business PCs. (Corporations typically re-image new personal computers with Enterprise upon receipt of the devices.)

 

But although Pro or Professional has a long history in business settings, Microsoft has made numerous decisions in its Windows 10 migration campaign to separate Pro and Enterprise even more, pushing them apart. In Kleynhans' view, the gap has become unbridgeable.

 

The last straw was Microsoft's on-the-fly changes to Windows 10 support.

 

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.

 

"Some customers have requested an extension to the standard 18 months of support for Windows 10 releases," a Microsoft executive said at the time.

 

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.

 

Windows 10 Enterprise 1709, for example, and its free "supplemental servicing," will exhaust support in October 2019. But Windows 10 Pro 1709 runs out of support on April 9, 2019.

 

"The one thing that really surprised me about the added support," said Kleynhans in an interview, "was the fact that it didn't apply to Pro. I think that this telegraphed the fact that, for businesses, Pro is being dead-ended."

 

Even though the six-month support extension ended with the 1803 feature upgrade, the one that began reaching some users late last month, in the report Kleynhans co-wrote with Gartner colleague Michael Silver, the duo made clear that they believe Pro is viewed by Microsoft as a second-class citizen.

 

"Customers currently using Windows 10 Pro should continue to monitor Microsoft's life cycle announcements because they will eventually need to budget for Windows [10] Enterprise as Windows [10] Pro becomes more 'pro-sumer' and small-business oriented," they wrote in a six-item list of recommendations.

 

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.

 

"The extensions and paid support option only apply to the Enterprise and Education SKUs," Kleynhans and Silver said in their report, "Plan and Budget for Short Windows and Office Support Cycles Based on Microsoft's February 2018 Announcements," which was published by Gartner last month. "Customers using Windows 10 Pro will still see support end after 18 months. In this way, Microsoft is further reinforcing that it expects enterprise customers to move to the Enterprise edition of Windows 10."

 

Source: Windows 10 Pro is a dead end for the enterprise, Gartner says (Computerworld - Gregg Keizer)

[virge]

This is complete and utter nonsense, I have been so busy upgrading companies PC's to Windows 10 from Windows 95, Vista, 7, 8.1, etc.  I just did a large scale enterprise rollout of over 200 seats. Many companies want to get Windows 10 to eliminate the system crashes they have been experiencing in the past.

[steven36]

 it dont say windows 10 is dead  it says Windows 10  pro is , most large scale enterprise use  enterprise versions. Mostly smaller businesses ran pro,  I know were my mom works have not said a word about  upgrading to windows 10 yet and they waited tell 2013 to upgrade to windows 7 just like the majority will wait tell next year . Businesses that can't afford the new rentware model that's coming should  switch to Linux but most ITs and Businesses I talk too are not very smart and that's what keeps greedy companies like M$ rich.

 

Windows 10 Subscription Activation

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/deployment/windows-10-enterprise-subscription-activation

 

Strange i been using windows 7 and 8.1 since 2010  and i never had no crashes unless i had a crappy  oem install with bloatware from the computer vendor on it . None of my machines  on my network no longer have windows 10.  I'm going to switch all mine over to Linux by 2023 unless Windows 10 becomes stable for consumers . Fun fact fanboys existed in the 19th Century too  back then they belonged to the Sherlock Homes club now they  all belong too software forums of every OS .

 

 

Quote

 

It's the kind of fandom that surely is only possible thanks to millions of people living trivial lives with too much spare time. It's hard to imagine readers in the 19th century caring enough about fictional characters to get all worked up, considering that they were probably spending 16 hours a day in the coal mines.

 

But you'd be wrong. For example, when Sherlock Holmes was "killed off" by his creator Arthur Conan Doyle in 1893, the fanboy rage was comparable to when the show Firefly was canceled in 2002, only instead of spamming message boards, they spammed the real world. In London, grieving "Sherlockians" took to the streets wearing black armbands and flooded the offices of Conan Doyle's publisher with hate mail. It was an Internet shitstorm before there was an Internet.

 

[coromonadalix]

I would never install any home or pro versions

If the entreprise version is not cleaned of any talk back to msoft  (telemetry and other crap stuff) , i'll never install in my company, nor recommend it, i want an entreprise CLEAN at install,  not using any win10 privacy tools - 0 and 0 shut up, any scripts or registry gimmicks to do the job  etc ....

 

I simply dont thrust them

 

I have very long running windows XP and Windows 7  32 and 64 bits .... they work very well in industrials pc's  or pc''s who can be powered for very long periods,  the secret thing is : we don't permit any internet activity and block any software installations witout admin rights.

 

 

[straycat19]

12 hours ago, virge said:

I just did a large scale enterprise rollout of over 200 seats.

 

Surely you don't really consider 200 seats 'a large scale enterprise'.   Try 18,400 seats which is what we have in total.  But we aren't running 10 yet.  When the decision is made to roll it out it will be just a simple matter of pushing one key and every machine will have it installed over night.  That's the beauty of Microsoft Systems Center.  The final image can be tailored for each individual department and it has the ability to target a single system, a whole department, or all the departments in the enterprise with their respective software packages.  

 

3 hours ago, coromonadalix said:

i want an entreprise CLEAN at install

 

If you want total control over your network/systems then you need to be a Microsoft Systems Center client.  Systems Center gives you total control over your systems.  What is installed on them, what is allowed to run, what employees are allowed to do and also tells you everything they do.  We know how many hours a day each employee uses each program, how long they surf the internet and what sites they visit.  The reports are granular so they can be seen as an overall view of the whole or of any individual department or user.  Microsoft has absolutely no control over individual systems or what is allowed past the perimeter.  

 

In all honesty, when I was first told we were rolling Systems Center out I was not impressed, but over the last 5 years it has proven its worth in discovering illegal activities of employees, though their have only been a few.  Once they were shown a typical end of day user report most of them got the message that big brother owned and controlled their workstation.  It also reduced support costs because they can no longer download and run anything on their systems.  If it isn't an allowed program then it can't be run or installed.

 

If you want even more control, though at an enormous cost, an enterprise can go to diskless workstations.  In other words there is no actual workstation, just a little box with a monitor, mouse and keyboard.  They turn it on and a login screen appears.  They login and the desktop comes up with the programs they are allowed to run.  Everything is run on servers and saved on servers.  The closest they come to real data is if they print something to a departmental printer that is centrally located.  That was looked at before we went to Systems Center but the cost of converting over to that was prohibitive.  

[pc71520]

13 hours ago, coromonadalix said:

I have very long running Windows XP and Windows 7  32 and 64 bits .... they work very well in industrial PCs.

I second that.

[steven36]

The Russians are catching  on and moving away from windows I spotted this at reddit.

Quote

 

Russian dual core 1.2 GHz MIPS CPU BE-T1000 released with Debian image

NeoTheFox

Retails for 3990RUB or 65$ per CPU, runs Debian 9.0.
Looks like Russia would soon have CPUs running Linux in a lot of governmental institutions with no way of replacing this OS with Windows since it's MIPS architecture. Also comes with no firmware or any ME/PSP-like technology.
Website: https://www.baikalelectronics.com/products/
Buy (website in Russian): https://www.chipdip.ru/product0/9000481202

 

With all the spying and stuff going on with ME/PSP-like technology. (AKA the NSA /CIA built in house in PCs)  and it will just run off  generic Linux Firmware no need to install closed source updates from a  3rd party..  i would not mind building me a pc with a cpu like this  myself. I've ran Anti x before witch is close to using Debian , Anti X is just for older PCs  that had XP on them but its  the same as Debian. Good to see these CPUs being made.

[J.C]

If an ENTERPRISE is not using the ENTERPRISE version of Windows for their endpoints, well, that's their problem. I'm sure as hell I won't apply for a job there. Companies that do dumb savings like that can hide even worse IT issues and nightmares...