Disclosure: Microsoft is a customer of the author.
I’ve been on Windows since the 1980s. I was one of the designated launch analysts when Windows 95 launched, and in a way I owe my success as an analyst to that launch. It put me on the map as an influential analyst.
I remember some of the pain of those early years when, for example, I put Windows 95 on my CEO’s laptop – and made it part of the process. Then I heard that an Intel engineer put it on a production machine in one of Intel’s Fabs and crashed the FAB. It was Windows 95, and it started what was to become a long term relationship between me and Windows.
Now, with the latest Windows 11 update in place, it looks like this latest version of the operating system is ready for the limelight. Let’s see why it might finally be time to roll out Windows 11.
A brief history of Windows
It’s funny, and a bit sad, how Microsoft approaches new OS releases now, compared to when Windows 95 came out. It was both the best and worst OS releases ever. Microsoft’s operating – better because the marketing team did their job so well that people lined up around the block to buy it (back then you paid for OS upgrades), worse because dev and support messed up the process.
Microsoft hadn’t yet realized that it had to deal with the uncontrollable complexity and diversity of PCs. He made changes between the beta and the release candidates that made the final product worse than the beta. And then, instead of increasing support, it did the opposite: people calling for help received a busy signal instead of help, destroying the great work of the marketing team.
Over time, Microsoft fixed development issues. Windows 10 was, compared to previous offerings (Windows Millennium Edition, Windows Vista and Windows 8), an almost perfect version. Windows 11 was initially plagued with incompatibilities with non-TPM PCs intended for consumers and, unfortunately, sold to businesses during the great work-from-home disaster that followed the COVID-19 shutdowns.
But for businesses that stuck with enterprise-ready hardware, moving to Windows 11 provided increased security, better support for newer hardware, and a few other benefits. Forrester, in its Total Economic Impact study, found that the operating system provided a measurable increase in productivity once it was fully deployed. I find the approach used by Forrester to be better than Gartner’s TCO approach because it balances benefits against costs rather than focusing excessively on costs.
Targeted Benefits
For much of Windows history, it was engineers who thought they had a psychic understanding of what users wanted, but had trouble building the product to original specifications. The result? Features that had been promised were often removed before launch. That changed a decade ago, as products like Microsoft Intune offered a stronger connection to real customer needs, allowing Microsoft to be more responsive to real business customer needs.
As you’d expect, this places security features such as the strict TPM requirement in priority, resulting in an operating system that is inherently more resistant to compromise. The latest update includes improved phishing protection with Microsoft Defender SmartScreen and Windows Defender for Enterprise app control. Smart App Control, another new feature, prevents employees from running malicious apps. Windows Autopatch helps businesses ensure patches are installed without disruption. And there’s a new application and driver compatibility scan feature in Microsoft Endpoint Manager to reduce issues with rogue or buggy software and drivers.
The Update Compliance feature helps ensure that users regularly update their software and don’t become sources of malware. IT can now deliver organizational messages to employees above the taskbar, alerting them to issues that need immediate attention. And the Microsoft Store app is now integrated with Microsoft Intune to provide greater control over apps used by employees and ensure company app policies are followed.
For hybrid work, Microsoft rolled out Windows Studio Effects, which can reduce background noise, provide better automatic framing, and adjust the appearance of your eyes to make it look like you’re always watching others on a Zoom call. or Teams. Finally, for video conferencing calls, Live Captions can automatically transcribe audio content to make a presentation easier to understand.
Much of this will be covered in greater depth in the upcoming largely virtual Microsoft Ignite event; if you’re interested in the office, this could be a must-see show this year.
Microsoft’s change of direction
Once upon a time, the deployment of products like Windows 95 was driven less by market needs and more by the need to generate revenue. The times have changed. The revenue incentive (as the link between revenue and upgrades is now weaker) has been reduced, and upgrades are now more closely tied to security, productivity, and manageability . This tends to make upgrades less discretionary, as short-term employee disruption (which has also decreased) is better than an almost certain breach – and the benefits clearly outweigh the costs, as has shown the Forrester study.
It may be time to deploy Windows 11, but be aware that the benefits will be closely tied to new features that will require training and integration into existing IT policy to be effective. If you can’t do the latter, it might be a good idea to wait for the former. And you’ll need to implement tools like Microsoft Intune to get the most out of the benefits Windows 11 promises.
On a personal note, I’ve been using Windows 11 since launch and now can’t stand using Windows 10 machines. (But it took me a few days to get used to the differences.)
In the end, it’s the enhanced security of Windows 11 that best justifies its use. Because, as with any security-focused release, delaying the upgrade leaves in place the potential for a massive breach that no one wants.
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