CW+ Premium Content/Computer Weekly

For almost two decades, the dominant desktop operating system in enterprise IT has been Microsoft Windows. Windows remains cemented in the enterprise mindset, even though user or client-side computing is a world apart from the desktop IT of the late 1990s. The combined installed base of Android and iOS far exceeds that of Windows-based PCs. Browser-based and mobile app-based enterprise applications are also commonplace, due to the maturity of software as a service (SaaS) in business. Yet the majority of older enterprise applications are designed for Windows users, and desktop administrators have spent years fine-tuning the management of the Windows estate. Microsoft will officially stop supporting Windows 7 on 14 January 2020, but many businesses still rely heavily on it. They have yet to shift to Windows 10. There is therefore an opportunity for IT to ask a difficult question: “Is there anything better out there?” Windows alternatives Mac OS is clearly the most direct rival, and Apple has managed to ride on the success of the ...