55 Working Days Remaining on Windows 7
As of today, there are 87 calendar days to the end of extended support for Windows 7 on January 14, 2020. Having said this, effectively, customers have about 55 working days (not counting holidays) left to migrate their Windows 7 devices.
Early this week, Microsoft updated their March 12, 2019 Blog post Making the transition to Windows 10 and Office 365 with the following editor note:
We are now extending the notifications discussed below to Windows 7 Po devices to ensure our customers are aware of the end of support for Windows 7 and can take action to remain productive and secure. Devices that are domain-joined as a part of an IT-managed infrastructure will not receive the notifications.
Microsoft has stated that it won’t be giving technical support, software updates or issue security fixes for Windows 7 after it reaches end of support and these devices run a greater risk of getting viruses or malware with continued use.
If a customer has identified devices that will remain on Windows 7 it is highly recommended that they get Windows 7 Extended Update Support at a cost $50.00 per device. (This was previously available only to large enterprise customers, and as of a few weeks ago Microsoft made it available to organizations of all sides.
To put it into context: If a customer has 1,000 devices left on Windows 7, that means they would have to actively migrate 18 devices per day / 5 days per week to meet the deadline.
My organization, Dell Technology Services helps many companies with this transition, but in my travels, I have encountered many that despite their best efforts are having significant challenges with their Windows 7 to Windows 10 migrations.
