Microsoft to undertake surveys in India as Windows XP deadline nears

Back in April, software giant Microsoft had said that it would be pulling out support for Windows XP in less than a year, asking businesses and home users on the old operating system to upgrade to a more modern platform like Windows 7 or Windows 8. The support, which ends on April 8, 2014, marks the end of 12 years of free-technical support, which the company says is the longest extended for any software product or service. 

Now, in order to remind enterprise customers of the old operating system of the impending deadline, the company’s India division has commissioned surveys which will warn organisations, government agencies and state-owned banks about the repercussions of not upgrading.

According to data from a study conducted by Ascentius Consulting, Microsoft claims that 34,115 public sector bank branches are at risk once the deadline expires. According to a report from The Hindu, Amrish Goyal, General Manager of Windows Business Group, said that 30 percent of the Indian commercial market, consisting of both companies and public offices, are yet to upgrade.

Microsoft commissions surveys to warn Indian organisations

The most worrisome part of this statistic is the fact that government offices and public sector banks, all of which run critical operations, are at risk. Goyal, while talking about this, said that 50 percent of the Indian banking sector is currently running on Windows XP. The size of the commercial PC market, according to the source, is estimated at 20 million. If the banking sector does not upgrade by the time the support ends, there could issues ranging from security breaches to increased downtimes.

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-in) issued an advisory note back in June, informing government departments using XP to immediately plan for an upgrade and test operations. The advisory, according to the source, said that not upgrading would throw up security and compliance issues and suspension of certification by authorities.