There is some good news for Microsoft on the Windows 11 enterprise adoption front as a survey of more than 750,000 Windows endpoints indicates that a healthy 88 percent of those not already running the tech giant’s latest operating system are ready for an upgrade.

However, with 11 percent of those devices needing to be replaced in order to run Microsoft’s latest OS, time is running out. In October 2025, the support plug will be pulled for Windows 10 for the vast majority of customers. Some biz customers will be able to keep the security updates flowing for a few more years, but the direction of travel is clear – Microsoft would like users to migrate to Windows 11.

While 88 percent of devices yet to migrate are capable of meeting Microsoft’s requirements for running Windows 11, the report from ControlUp, found that of the more than 750,000 devices in its sample, 82 percent were yet to make the jump.

“The clock is ticking for enterprises to adopt the more secure and capable Windows 11, yet many organizations are stuck, unsure about their environment’s readiness,” said Simon Townsend, Field CTO of ControlUp. “But doing nothing is not an option. With more than four in five devices still needing to make the switch, now is the time to fully assess Windows 11 readiness to ensure a seamless transition with less downtime and disruption.”

The clock is indeed ticking. The most recent figures from Statcounter indicate that while Windows 11’s market share has finally crested 30 percent (30.83 percent to be precise), it is still way behind the 64.99 percent of Windows 10. If ControlUp’s figures are representative of the wider enterprise world, then the desktop share of Windows 11 should accelerate once administrators hit the deploy button.

The problem faced by many administrators is justifying the move to Windows 11. Other than keeping the support lights on, there aren’t many use cases where a move to Windows 11 is absolutely needed. Although the benefits of moving from Windows 7 to Windows 10 were clearer, things are muddier for Windows 11, particularly considering the training required for users, who need to get used to the changes in Start Menu as well as the need to revalidate corporate applications on the platform.

In 2022, Lansweeper’s research found that Microsoft’s stringent hardware requirements for Windows 11 presented a challenge for upgraders. Almost two years later, more endpoints have compatible hardware, although many users are sticking with Windows 10.

So, for Microsoft, it’s good news that more enterprise hardware is ready for its flagship operating system and bad news that administrators are holding off on migrating.

The world’s love affair with Windows 10 shows no signs of stopping – that’s despite Microsoft warning that it will end all support for the operating system from October 2025. Once that fast-approaching deadline arrives, those still using this ageing platform will no longer get vital upgrades and security patches aimed at keeping PCs safe.

Although most Windows 10 users are now well aware of the issues of sticking with this software, millions still aren’t making the move to Windows 11 with recent stats showing Windows 10 still dominates when it comes to sheer user numbers.

Although Windows 11 adoption rates might appear sluggish, Microsoft isn’t concerned about the amount of PCs that haven’t yet made the switch.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” said Aaron Woodman, Vice President, Windows Marketing at Microsoft, when quizzed about Windows 10 user numbers.

“We had a bunch of customers on Windows 7 even after we launched Windows 10, until the end of support date for Windows 7. We’re actually ahead of the Windows 7 to Windows 10 transition.”

Along with past figures showing how many users simply wait until the last minute to move operating systems, the fact that so many people remain with Windows 10 is a testament to how good it is, Woodman explained.

“If you look at Windows 10 I think it’s quite unique in the sense that it took a significant leap in its performance and more importantly, its durability and its capability of running PCs.

“Windows 10 moved the hardware floor and that’s really the big difference between Windows 7 transition to Windows 10.”

Woodman also said that a lot of customers have already bought devices that are ready for Windows 11 and are preparing to switch before October’s deadline.

“Every company I’ve talked to has plans to move off of Windows 10 into Windows 11 at or before or afterwards using the extended support agreements we have,” Woodman said.

Although the stats clearly show that millions remain addicted to Windows 10 the figures do vary from country to country.

“It’s different depending on the country,” Woodman explained. “Developed countries have moved overwhelmingly to Windows 11 but you have places that have different socioeconomic classes and places like China, that have very long duration where you have PCs that get handed down and resold at a level that we don’t really see in the developed markets.

“You still see Windows 7 and Windows XP running in China as an example – so they just have different life cycles.”

Microsoft is announcing some fairly major changes for Windows and the Surface lineup as part of its Build developer conference this week, but there’s one thing that’s definitely not coming, at least not right now: a Windows 12 update.

Speculation about the “Windows 12” update began propagating at some point last year in reports that suggested that Microsoft was shifting back to a three-year release cycle like the ones used for Windows Vista, 7, 8, and 10 in the late 2000s and early 2010s.

And Microsoft may have intended to call this fall’s release “Windows 12” at some point, and it does come with substantial changes both above and under the hood to better support Arm systems and to emphasize Microsoft’s AI focus.

“We really focused on modernizing this update of Windows 11,” said Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Windows and Devices Pavan Davuluri at a technical briefing on Microsoft’s campus in mid-April. “We engineered this update of Windows 11 with a real focus on AI inference and taking advantage of the Arm64 instruction set at every layer of the operating system stack. For us, what this meant really was building a new compiler in Windows. We built a new kernel in Windows on top of that compiler. We now have new schedulers in the operating system that take advantage of these new SoC architecture.”

Microsoft didn’t say whether the updated system components would have user-noticeable benefits for users of current x86 systems, though these updates are likely the reason why the OS has gone from “unsupported” to “unbootable” on some systems with early 64-bit x86 processors.

Even with these changes, at some point the company made the decision to stay the course with Windows 11’s user interface and branding rather than starting over from scratch and discarding whatever momentum Windows 11 had managed to achieve. By some metrics, Windows 11 usage has continued its slow but steady increase; by others, it has mostly stagnated this year. Leaked internal data suggests that Windows 11 currently has somewhere between 400–500 million active users, a slower pace of adoption than Windows 10 at this point in its lifecycle.

Whatever Microsoft decides to call it, Windows’ versioning doesn’t have a ton to do with the underpinnings of the operating system. The first release of Windows 11 was essentially Windows 10 with a new user interface on top of it—at one point it was known as “Windows 10X,” and the Windows 11 branding came as a surprise when it was announced three years ago. Plenty of apps and games continue to identify it as a flavor of Windows 10.

Microsoft did decide to impose stricter system requirements for Windows 11 than for Windows 10, but these are enforced by a handful of easily tweaked registry settings. Once you bypass requirements for Secure Boot or a TPM 2.0 module, early Windows 11 builds will install and run on practically any 64-bit PC that could run Windows 10, highlighting their shared foundation. Even with the newer processor requirement, unsupported installations will continue to work on basically any PC made in the last 12 or 13 years (the official system requirements remain unchanged).

The Windows 11 24H2 update will hit most Windows 11 PCs when it’s officially released later this fall, though Windows Insiders in the Dev channel can get the work-in-progress version of the update now.

Microsoft is unleashing build 26040 of Windows Server and has revealed the official branding for the product: Windows Server 2025.

It also pushed out build 26040 of the Windows Insider Canary Channel version of Windows 11.

Microsoft’s desktop and server operating systems share many internal similarities and a common code base, although the former lacks the latter’s enterprise features. Windows 11 Pro, for example, tops out at 6TB of physical memory, while Windows Server 2022 can go as far as 48TB.

Infamously, it was possible to switch Windows NT from Workstation to Server mode many years ago, demonstrating just how much commonality existed between editions.

Although Server editions of Microsoft’s flagship operating system are quite a bit more differentiated these days, the matching build numbers may cause users to wonder why updated branding for Windows Server has been revealed while Windows 11 continues to retain its 2021 branding.

Doubtless, a team of marketers is feverishly working out how to shoehorn the letters A and I into Windows 12.

wAIndows, anyone?

As well as confirming the Windows Server 2025 branding, Microsoft also introduced some nice-to-haves in build 26040, including Bluetooth improvements and Wi-Fi support enabled by default for Edge scenarios.

More interesting for administrators is the ability to ditch the hardcoded default port for SMB over QUIC. Instead of the default UDP/443 port, a user can now switch to any other available port.

The company introduced flighting to Windows Server Insiders on January 26, 2024, meaning that administrators keen to try out the latest code from Microsoft would be able to perform an in-place OS upgrade – a feature long enjoyed by Insiders testing the company’s desktop operating system – rather than having to perform a clean installation or take a chance that running a setup from Windows Server media would do the job correctly.

Microsoft thanked administrators for taking the time to test the upgrades: “This is a familiar task, and it sure became easier and more reliable over the years. But it’s time-consuming and might be boresome— especially if you do it often.”

The plan is to continue releasing new builds of Windows Server for Insiders once every two weeks or so. Administrators would need to manually check for new builds unless automatic updates are enabled. The Desktop Experience is also required to access the Settings app.

Production versions of Windows Server 2022 and 2019 are not affected – an administrator would still need to download a preview build to get started.

The Canary Channel build of Windows 11 did contain several changes aimed at administrators, as well as improvements around mobile device image handling and enhancements to the Windows setup experience. IT administrators can now configure the Windows Local Administrator Password Solution (LAPS) to create, enable, or disable the managed local account.

The account name can also be configured and randomized if required. There’s a new PasswordComplexity setting to drop some of the more confusing characters – for example, ‘I’ and ‘1’ – to aid readability and the ability to generate passphrases.

And, finally, Microsoft wasn’t kidding about ditching WordPad. Already removed from clean installs, the application will also be removed on upgrade.