Is Windows 8 selling slower than Vista?

Who has upgraded?

Criticism of the new operating system hasn't deterred some of Australia’s largest organisations.

Bankwest was one of the first to jump on board. It recently started shifting its over 4000 staff off Windows XP and onto a standard operating environment based on Windows 8. 

Bankwest was attracted to faster boot-up times and lower licensing costs, IT staff told iTnews in August.

Advisory firm McGrathNicol rolled out Windows 8 as its new standard operating environmentfrom February this year and completed the deployment by May.

The company moved around 340 staff members from Windows 7 onto Windows 8 running on HP laptops. The business doesn’t use any desktops due to its highly mobile workforce, chief information officer Shiran Herath told iTnews. 

Herath offered staff a four minute educational video on how to use the new operating system before it was fully deployed, which he said went a long way to addressing any potential issues with the new interface.

Herath said there had been no undue complexity moving onto the new platform, nor had there been any negative feedback from users. 

“The general feedback has been that the system performance is very good,” he told iTnews. “With any operating system you’d expect some bad feedback, but the only questions we’ve had are around how to shut it down and sort through applications.”

Herath and his team offered a sweetener to staff for the Windows 8 rollout, upgrading from VPN connectivity to use of DirectAccess, which connects automatically rather than via the user having to manually initiate and terminate a connection. McGrathNicol staff had fallen in love with the feature, he said.

McGrathNicol did not offer users an option to downgrade to Windows 7.

Herath is looking to standardise on 'four pillars' - Microsoft for the majority of corporate applications, Cisco for networking, Telstra for comms and HP for hardware.

This extends into McGrathNicol’s mobile strategy - the company has around 140 Windows Phones issued to executives, compared to around 30 iPhones and iPads. 

In the works

Accounting software giant MYOB it also planning to upgrade from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1 early next year. The company had planned to migrate in 2013 but delayed the rollout in favour of more pertinent programs.

MYOB CTO Simon Raik-Allen told iTnews the software company had first interacted with the new OS in pre-release. MYOB certified its products on the Windows 8 platform and in doing so got its internal systems prepared.

Raik-Allen said there was no rush to upgrade. The company was more focused on upgrading to discrete features such as SkyDrive and Office 365.

“It’s just a matter of finding the time,” he said. “We just have to package it up for the deployment environment - we already have the skills and the infrastructure - we just have to put it in the system and press the button.”

Raik-Allen also said he wanted to make sure MYOB’s 1200 staff were prepared for the change in user interface, but didn’t anticipate any issues.

“The difference with MYOB is we are 1200 computer geeks,” he said. “We love technology. There has been some mixed feedback but that doesn’t really bother us, we all know where the Windows button is and we know how to use it.”

MYOB uses Windows across all device forms in its organisation. Staff are issued with either a laptop or desktop based on preference, and around 200 smartphones are running Windows Phone. A smattering of MacBook Pros and iPhones rounds up the tally. 

Parramatta City Council is similarly moving from a Windows 7 desktop environment and Windows XP on its laptop fleet to an SOE based on Windows 8.1.

The new OS will go on 200 tablets and laptops first before the council’s 450 desktops. The council expects the entire process to take about two weeks.

The Australian Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) is midway through designing the necessary backend and telecommunications infrastructure for its own move from Windows 7 to Windows 8, CIO Graham Gathercole told iTnews.

He expects to be able to rollout the new operating system to desktops and remote devices early next financial year. DAFF is already using Windows 8 Elitepad tablets.

The department will train and educate uses on the new interface in conjunction with Microsoft. Gathercole said he has not received any negative feedback yet.

Gathercole and the department liked the operating system’s Windows-to-go boot stick - which offers a corporate image installed on a bootable certified USB drive for use on any compatible computer - as well as DirectAccess. 

The Queensland Department of State Development, Infrastructure and Planning is in the planning stages of a Windows 8 migration, jumping from the soon-to-be-retired Windows XP, with deployment expected by the end of the first quarter 2014.

The department has been piloting Windows 8 tablets with executives to get them used to the new interface, and so far responses to the Windows 8 look and feel have been good, a department spokesperson said. 

The department will offer staff an ICT lab where workers can familiarise themselves with the new operating system. From there it will ascertain what, if any, extra training requirements are needed.

Additionally, Tourism Australian recently indicated it was studying a potential move, and ING Direct last year said at the commencement of its Windows 7 rollout that it would look at moving to Windows 8 when practicable.