Most businesses are preparing to upgrade to Windows 10

Windows 10

A new piece of research has revealed that the majority of businesses are planning to migrate over to Windows 10 inside the next year, even if they aren't planning to do so in the near-term, with the Anniversary Update (which lands tomorrow) apparently not proving much of an incentive.

The survey of over 300 IT pros conducted by Adaptiva – which took in different sized companies from SMBs to enterprises – found that 64% of respondents said their firm would be upgrading to Windows 10 within the next year.

But tomorrow's Anniversary Update left most of those surveyed on unmoved, with the vast majority – 76% – saying that the update isn't increasing their sense of urgency to get on with a Windows 10 upgrade.

So 24% feel that it is a motivating factor, a relatively small number of course, although the figure was slightly higher when it came to enterprises with over 10,000 staff members at 30%.

Security first

And the reason most companies want to upgrade to Microsoft's newest OS? That would be the added security features, because as we've seen earlier today, Redmond is making plenty of moves to ensure that Windows 10 is the most secure desktop operating system the company has ever made.

And that's doubly true for the business world, when it comes to features like Device Guard and data protection.

Jim Souders, chief operating officer at Adaptiva, commented: "These survey results show that the anticipated surge in enterprise Windows 10 adoption is definitely on the horizon, and some organizations are expediting plans in light of the anniversary release."

For those businesses holding out against upgrading to Windows 10, the top reason for doing so – cited by 68% – was unsurprisingly legacy apps, and the fact that they may not be compatible with the new OS. 62% said time constraints were the biggest barrier to an upgrade.

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).