Windows XP must be banished by the end of 2013 or dire things will happen. We are doing well. We've nearly finished our Windows 7 roll out. Plenty are behind us on the endless treadmill that Microsoft designed so cleverly for us back in the 90s. And meanwhile, Windows 8 is upon us.
We need Windows now, as we always have, because we depend on applications that won't travel. But Gartner tells us we've passed a tipping point. In 1996, most organisations needed Windows to run 95% of their applications. Gradually the ground has shifted and we use more and more software that will run on any OS, often through a browser. In 2012, the percentage for most organisations dropped below 50% for the first time. Perhaps the treadmill does have an end? Perhaps we just completed our last major corporate roll out of a new Windows version?
Certainly, the PC is no longer the centre of the Universe. Watch the research academic in action and you'll see her juggling collections of devices, some personally owned, which are simply different ways of reaching information in different contexts and for different purposes. The Cloud replaces the PC at the heart of this world. Our job will be to make this easy and make it safe to bring multiple gadgets into play. Perhaps Windows 8 is destined to be just one of the many now - just one more way to run a browser.
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