Microsoft Canada’s pitch on why you should ditch Windows XP

For an operating system that made its debut 12 long years ago, there’s still a lot of love out there for Windows XP. With support for the old OS ending on April 8, 2014 however, Microsoft and its partners are striving mightily to convince reluctant businesses to transfer that love to a new beau.

It was a major topic at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in July, when the vendor armed partners with with tools, marketing messaging and incentives to capture what it sees as a $10 billion global opportunity: move the legacy commercial install base still running Windows XP to a modern and supported Windows OS before support ends, and businesses are vulnerable to exploit and other threats.

“Windows XP is a 12-year-old OS,” said Reshma Sinha Roy, director of Windows 8 marketing. “It’s an OS we all love and it was great for its time, but today we need to move on.”

Some critics though say Microsoft is playing Chicken Little, countering the sky won’t really fall when official support ends, and an upgrade to a “modern” Windows, either 7 or 8.1, may not be a necessity for every business. They are talking about it though – a recent article on ITBusiness.ca on the topic elicited a bevy of responses from skeptical SMBs.

Recently, ITBusiness.ca’s Brian Jackson put some of the comments from Windows XP-living SMBs to Steve Heck, the CIO of Microsoft Canada. He attempts to bust some “OS migration myths” in the video above.

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Jim Love, Chief Content Officer, IT World Canada

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Jeff Jedras
Jeff Jedras
A veteran technology and business journalist, Jeff Jedras began his career in technology journalism in the late 1990s, covering the booming (and later busting) Ottawa technology sector for Silicon Valley North and the Ottawa Business Journal, as well as everything from municipal politics to real estate. He later covered the technology scene in Vancouver before joining IT World Canada in Toronto in 2005, covering enterprise IT for ComputerWorld Canada. He would go on to cover the channel as an assistant editor with CDN. His writing has appeared in the Vancouver Sun, the Ottawa Citizen and a wide range of industry trade publications.

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