If your business still needs to upgrade Windows 7, you have less than a year to plan how you will respond to it no longer being supported. Not acting puts a number of important functions at risk.
Windows 7 is Nearing the End – What it Means for Your Business
When Microsoft stops supporting an operating system, it simply means they aren’t devoting resources to old technology. This can be seen as a way to influence Windows 7 users to upgrade to a newer version of Windows but it is one that is more secure and compatible with modern software. From Microsoft’s perspective it doesn;t make sense to keep multiple versions of the saem software patched and updated, especially when there are newer versions available.
SECURITY
The primary risk of not upgrading to Windows 10 is that an unsupported system is a serious security risk. System updates are critical to helping your network protect itself from threats such as ransomware or hackers that are actively looking to penetrate your system. The worldwide WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017 was able to spread because companies were running unpatched, unsupported operating systems such as Windows XP and hackers were easily able to exploit this vulnerability. Safety is a critical element for all businesses, but it is doubly so for organizations that deal with sensitive financial or health information, which makes upgrading to a newer operating system even more important.
SUPPORT
Although Microsoft will stop releasing updates and patches for Windows 7 in January 2020, they will offer an end-of-life extended update package–but if you rely on this instead of updating your operating system, the pricing is expensive, and it will only increase over the years. While it doesn’t make financial sense for Microsoft to devote resources to outdated technology, the same applies to your business. This means that at some point, not only will it be risky to run it from a security standpoint, but if you need new applications or if you need to recover lost data, you will be out of luck.
Service Interruptions
Software developers use the latest technology when designing and writing new applications. What they don’t like to do is release different versions of the same software so it can run on older operating systems and devote resources to supporting those users. Applications released during a transition period like what we have experienced over the past few years may have multiple versions but as operating systems like Windows 7 begin to phase out, so too does the support for the applications developed to run on them. For all its virtues, Windows 7 simply wasn’t made to run today’s software, so as your operating system gets older, you’ll find you’re experiencing network slowdowns, malfunctioning software, system crashes, data loss, and an overall drop in productivity as your employees struggle to maintain daily tasks with old technology.
What Should You Do?
If your business still uses Windows 7, you can do a number of things, and the first is to replace it with Windows 10. Since both operating systems are made by Microsoft, upgrading will be relatively easy. The best way to handle this is to have the IT experts at Reverus handle the data migration. We have helped many clients upgrade their systems over the years, and we expect the coming year will keep us busy upgrading businesses like yours from Windows 7 to 10. So if you want this process to be as seamless as possible, call us.
