Enterprise adoption of Windows 11 is slipping

Data released by Lansweepere, maker of an enterprise IT asset management platform, indicates that Windows 11 upgrades have nearly tripled in the past three months, but the overall adoption rate remains low. The survey of more than 10 million professional PCs by the publisher showed that 1.44% of terminals are now running Windows 11, an increase from 0.52% in January.

“Overall adoption remains slow, nearly six months after the initial launch of Windows 11 to the general public, as previous Lansweeper research found that 55% of endpoints analyzed are not capable of being upgraded to Windows 11,” the company said. While the majority of PCs scanned passed the RAM test (91%), only about half of the PCs tested’ TPM (Trusted Platform Module) met the requirements – 19% failed and 28% were not compatible with the TPM or had not activated it.

Forecasts far from optimistic

“For virtualized environments, the predictions are less optimistic,” the vendor said. “While CPU compatibility is slightly higher at 44.9%, our research shows that only 66.4% has enough RAM. Regarding TPM, the news is grim, only 0.23% of all virtual environments have TPM 2.0 enabled. Not surprisingly, TPM was never required for Windows, and although TPM passthrough (vTPM) exists to give virtual machines a TPM, it is rarely used. Most virtual instances will need to be changed to a vTPM before they can upgrade to Windows 11.

“TPMs on physical servers only passed the test 1.49% of the time, which means that about 98% of them would fail the upgrade if Microsoft creates a server operating system with similar requirements in the future. For virtual servers, again, there are almost no servers equipped with TPMs”. Lansweeper’s data contrasts sharply with that of AdDuplex, a PC monitoring tool, whose latest data indicates an adoption rate of 19.4%. Research from AdDuplex, however, showed that Windows 11 growth stagnated last month; Windows 11’s market share only increased by 0.1% compared to other Windows editions.

Results to be taken with tweezers

Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates, said AdDuplex’s numbers on Windows 11 adoption are too high, and Lansweeper’s claim that 55% of machines can’t run Windows 11 is probably too low. “I sincerely doubt that Windows 11 runs on 19% of all PCs in use today, since Windows 10 only runs on about 75% of PCs, according to the figures we believe,” Gold said. “This means that at 19%, about 25% of Windows 10 machines could be updated to Windows 11. I find it hard to believe that 25% of all existing Windows 10 devices are even compatible with the latest OS , given that many PCs in use are three to five years old or even older (probably at least 40%).”

When evaluating data from AdDuplex and Lansweeper, it is important to understand how the companies obtained their respective numbers, whether through a web browser interacting with certain websites (a group of self-selected users ) or by a volunteer user running the company’s software (again, a self-selected subset), Jack Gold said. “Without knowing exactly how they get their numbers, it’s pretty hard to gauge their accuracy. But I would definitely lean towards a lower number than a higher number,” he said. It’s likely that any machine over two years old won’t be compatible with Windows 11 (and therefore can’t be upgraded). And PCs are even more unlikely to be compliant if they’re old, low-end machines, Gold added.

Data based on Lansweeper research on over 10 million Windows devices. (Credit: Lansweeper)

Windows 11 abandoned for lack of interest?

In December, data from AdDuplex showed that the adoption rate for Windows 11 had reached almost 9%; this figure, again, contrasted sharply with the figures published by Lansweeper. At the time, it showed that the latest platform had an adoption rate of less than 1%. Microsoft pushed users to upgrade to Windows 11, but the overwhelming majority opted to stay on Windows 10.

Roel Decneut, director of strategy at Lansweeper, said that unlike previous versions of Windows, Windows 11 is simply a tuned version of Windows 10, and the fundamental differences between the two are minimal. “That’s probably the main reason why companies are against upgrading to a newer, and almost unproven, version rather than sticking with what they know with Windows 10,” Roel Decneut said.

No hasty conclusion

Steve Kleynhans, research vice president at Gartner, agreed that companies don’t really dive into this operating system. And they should not do it before 2023. Nevertheless, he believes that it is “a little” early to draw conclusions on the success of Windows 11. “If, technically, the update of the operating system dates from six months, a very large percentage of machines weren’t being offered the update just two months ago,” he said. ” The [taux d’installation] current is probably just the normal evolution of the market during the early stages of any new version of the operating system and not a sign of anything really problematic”.

Data from AdDuplex indicates that Windows 11 adoption has slowed. (Credit: AdDuplex)

Lansweeper’s updated survey results, however, show that the number of machines running “end-of-life” operating systems (i.e. platforms no longer supported by Microsoft) has fallen. at 6.6%, compared to 9.75% in January. A significant portion of these systems run on Windows XP and Windows 7 – software that Microsoft stopped supporting in 2014 and 2020 respectively.

Slow Adoption Expected for Windows 11

“Although the adoption rate is slowly increasing, it is clear that Windows 11 upgrades are not happening as quickly as Microsoft had hoped, especially in the business environment. Many companies have been deterred from having to buy other machines that meet these conditions [matérielles]while others are just happy with the current existence of Windows 10, which continues to be supported until 2025,” said Roel Decneut.

Due to the minimal differences between Windows 10 and 11, the latter’s slow adoption is likely to continue unless companies have a compelling reason to upgrade, Decnuet said. “For those looking to adopt Windows 11, the first step is to assess which of their existing PCs are upgradable,” he said. “That’s why IT asset management is so important for businesses, being able to run in-depth device audits that can tell IT teams the hardware specs of machines so they can assess how many devices are capable of being upgraded and the potential cost of such a move”.