Windows 10 has it advantages, but the stability of Win7 — to say nothing of the savings in not having to train staff on a new OS — has meant a number of IT administrators have stayed away from updating.
This week Microsoft released a public preview of a new tool to help change their minds. Called Windows Upgrade Analytics Service, the company says it is the same tools it uses for bulk upgrades.
The service uses telemetry to provide upgrade readiness, and recommendations about updating or removing the computers, applications and drivers, Microsoft says. It guides administrators through upgrade projects using a workflow based on Microsoft recommended practices. Up-to-date inventory data allows administrators to balance cost and risk in the process.
The tool could also be used for rollouts as well as update analysis.
Computerworld U.S. quotes a Gartner analyst saying  the service is a more advanced version of the Application Compatibility Toolkit that Microsoft made available for deploying Windows 7.
While consumer adoption — driven by free upgrades — is healthy, according to a Softchoice analysis earlier this year of more than 400,000 Windows-based devices in 169 North American companies, only 0.75 per cent of them were running some flavour of Windows 10.
