SP2: Coming to an enterprise near you - soon

SC reported earlier this week that the number of companies that have fully rolled-out SP2 may be as little as 24 percent. But Microsoft argues this figure will soon rise.

"When Microsoft released SP2 in August, we recommended enterprise customers take the necessary time to test and evaluate the service pack before deploying it," the software giant said. "We are now seeing an uptake in the number of enterprise customers that are deploying – or committing to deploy – SP2. In fact, during a recent survey of 800 enterprise customers, Microsoft received commitments from 77 percent to deploy the Service Pack over the next six months."

SP2 provided major patches to flaws in Windows XP that resulted in a number of major security holes, exploited by an ever-growing army of malware. According to Microsoft, it is likely to be deployed across enterprise business very soon.

"Merrill Lynch, one of the world's leading financial management and advisory companies, will deploy SP2 across 50,000 PC's by the middle of the year," a spokesperson said. "Additionally, Holland & Knight, one of the 15 largest law firms in the world, deployed SP2 across 3,500 PC's."

www.microsoft.com