Half Of Businesses Still Use Windows 2000

bonch writes "An AssetMetrix study shows that half of business are still running Windows 2000 four years after the release of Windows XP, and that usage of Windows 2000 has only decreased by 4% since 2003. Microsoft will officially stop supporting Windows 2000 by the end of this month, offering one last update rollup later this year. Windows XP's slower adoption illustrates Microsoft's difficulty in competing with the popularity of its own software platform, and makes it more difficult for Microsoft to convince people to upgrade when Longhorn is released late next year."

But maybe not

[davmoo]

Windows XP's slower adoption illustrates Microsoft's difficulty in competing with the popularity of its own software platform

I don't think the "popularity" of Windows 2000 is a factor. I think its more of businesses have a hard time justifying that hit for another $199 to Microsoft for an updated version when the version they've already paid for meets their needs.

Why Change?

[Adrilla]

As long as it runs their copy of Office and all programs they're running are also compatible with 2000 still, I don't see the incentive to spend thousands on a upgrade that is probably seen as highly unnecessary at this time, not to mention they're probably running them on boxes that would be slowed down by XP. The lack of support coming at the end of the month may have some incentive to move to a new version, but I still doubt many will see it as a great need to move on.

Re:...Or It Could Be...

[DenDave]

Or they are waiting for OSX86?? Perhaps studying transition to Linux?

Re:Why upgrade?

[MyLongNickName]

Agreed. Win2K is in a mature stage, where XP is still approaching it. I develop software on a Win 2K server box, and it is very robust, and does what I need it to do. Why upgrade? I won't until I am forced to. For all the jokes about Microsoft, they got their servr technology right with Win2K.

And here is Microsoft's biggest problem. There comes a point when the extra bells and whistles just aren't worth it. Then they have to find a way to get you to buy anyway. Microsoft is painfully aware of this... witness their licensing schemes, and premature end of support for products.

Why would they?

[ZiakII]

The simple fact of the matter is that upgrading from Windows 2k to Windows XP, doesn't offer much, a server running Windows 2003 Server, can still operate the same without switching the clients to Windows XP. Windows 2000 also takes uses less hardware requirements, and if it runs all their programs with ease, why would they risk switching to a new OS with problems? Then there is the fact of security Windows 2k has been around about 5 years, its going to have less exploits then a system like XP which can have more potential security flaws, then ones that been around longer.

Re:But maybe not

[rmjohnso]

I think it's less about the $199 for the software and more about the cost to actually roll an updated OS to every laptop and workstation. If you are a rather large company, like the one I work for, that has a lot of people who travel, getting everyone's data backedup, OS updated, and programs re-installed can be a nightmare.

Other issues to consider are things like Microsoft Java VM support. We have a few applications that require MS JVM (yes, I know it sucks and it probably very insecure), and getting it run under XP is difficult unless you find old copies of the JVM from Microsoft.

Re:But maybe not

[TheLinuxWarrior]

Right on track, however, I don't think it's the licensing cost that kills it, at least not for big business.

What kills it is the litterally millions of dollars in man hours that it takes to certify all of your applications prior to rollout, new scripting for things that didn't work, deployment teams to actually do the work, lost productivity when the upgrade doesn't go as expected for every single user. The list goes on and on. For a company like the one I worked at recently (100K employees), that $199 is just a drop in the bucket of the total upgrade cost.

And for what? For 50-75% of average business users, they're doing email, documents and presentations. Linux/OO could easily do that for them. So where is the compelling reason to upgrade to XP or Longhorn other than the monopolist dropping support for your current OS?

Re:Why upgrade?

[B4RSK]

And why is this a problem on a small corporate network?

The network is sitting behind a NAT router. Email is Thunderbird (or maybe Notes), browser is Firefox or other non-IE browser.

In such a situation Win2K is good for many years to come.

Re:umm

[jgionet]

hahaha.. I'll believe it when I see it.. I think Longhorn will become a LinuxOS when it's finally released..

Even though XP is "nice" I still think (along with many others) that Win2k was probably the "BEST" release M$ has even had. Everything else is simply more eye candy.

Re:Why upgrade?

[Total_Wimp]

For a well run business with good perimeter and internal security, Win2K is just too good to move away from. It's stability is great and it doesnt' suffer the performance issues of WinXP with SP2. It's also the last OS from Microsoft that actually treated users like they were using a computer instead of dumbing things down. (In WInXP: control panel "lite", stupid road blocks if you want to browse the file system and, of course, that annoying dog as the default search, to name a few).

One of my fondest memories of Win2K was semi-regularly seeing Linux/Unix users on Slashdot give it grudging props. It was unpretentious, did what it was supposed to do and did it with reasonable stability. In my opinion, that's pretty much the basics of what an OS is supposed to be, and quite a few other computer users agreed.

And the other half?

[nietsch]

How much of the other half still runs win95/98/me ? It just depends when they bought their comuters and how long they last, not how long MS thinks its software should last.

Care for the careful....

[Crimson Dragon]

I can recall similar tales of various versions of NT back in the day suffering from slow adoption. Aside from what has been previously stated in this thread about just what XP offers to business users as opposed to 2000 (almost nothing), let's keep mitigating factors in mind.

The enterprise costs of XP in support are greater than 2000 in a number of cases. Many companies bought into 2000 in the very beginning, and got hardware that worked at that time. Resources are a problem for many of the machines built OEM for Win2k. Additionally, compatibility issues with other software and hardware solutions arise. Speaking from personal experience, our company committed to a software phone system which, as it turned out when we tried to upgrade to XP, just STOPPED WORKING. This is really bad for a CALL CENTER. Compatibility issues such as these mar XP's widespread corporate adoption.

I will go so far as to predict Longhorn will have the same adoption problem if Redmond continues current patterns. With WinFS and .NET being scrapped as native to the OS, there are less headaches than one could initially surmise. I will stress, however, that the pattern of not being able to get something to work right and trashing it demonstrates a development problem which, if not rectified by now or soon, could result in an extremely poor product coming out of Redmond. They need to be at the top of their game, as their enemies come from all fronts with attractive offerings of their own these days...

Re:But maybe not

[Anonymous Coward]

And there is the reason why Linux adoption is so damn slow.

Unless you offer a genuine alternative, with a product that offers more than the current defacto, companies are going to consider it a waste of time.

Why change?

That's a pretty global mantra. And one that needs a pretty convincing counter arguement.

Re:But maybe not

[ILikeRed]

Well, XP does have one additional goodie.... I know of a couple companies that would rather not bother with product activation.

The best story I know of personally is with a notebook demanding reactivation for hardware changes during an XP trial while the user was on the road in a remote location with no way to activate... to bad it was the CEO's notebook. I guess these companies pushing product activation just can not understand why some customers resent being treated as copyright infringers.

If it ain't broke...

[parvenu74]

No kidding! It's pretty funny that after years of making less than impressive operating systems, what is now hurting MS is that they made a good one and now people aren't upgrading. If something works, why change it?

I don't think this is unique to Windows, though. How many shops are still on older versions of Solaris, Red Hat, or Suse? Heck, even Steve Jobs can't understand why people on OS X 10.2 and previous have not upgraded yet. Unless you *have* to have the latest and greatest -- or are running some sort of R&D operation -- most businesses are simply going to stick with what works.

Re:Why upgrade?

[RockModeNick]

I agree, I think windows XP is much more a package for home users, small business, and new businesses - windows XP has a robust packaged driver database, good for most home users without modern powerful hardware, most of which comes with XP drivers. I'm starting to think with how it operates XP is really the mature verson of 2k with added home simplicty and functionalities. For a corporate user with hardware already supported by 2k and a reasonable firewall and router, it's a waste of money to upgrade to XP.

Re:Are you kidding?

[Anonymous Coward]

Additionally, the copyrights on Win9x are still being held by MS. They are (by government fiat) the only place to get fixes to that OS. So why are they abandoning it? If it was a *real* piece of property, they'd lose ownership after abandonment.

Either support your stuff or let it free.

Re:Why upgrade?

[bheer]

Keep telling yourself that. People like you are _just_ the people F/OSS folk need to figure out why they haven't been able to even scratch the enterprise messaging market (dominated by IBM's Notes/Domino and MS' Outlook/Exchange).

Windows 2000 at work

[dutt]

I work at Ericsson in Sweden and we use Windows 2000 on all office machines. There is ofcourse Unix, Linux and XP installations at some development centers, but for everyday work and mail Windows 2000 is used.

XP does not give any increase in productivity and therefore there is no need to upgrade. Also at the rate Microsoft releases new operating systems the workload on the integration teams increase. Rolling out a new operating system requires a lot of testing on all the hardware found in the corporation. Because of this, it really has to be important to actually roll out a new version of Windows.

Have you tried upgrading?

[Anne Thwacks]

Have you tried upgrading??

Your system is down for a minimum of several days, and possibly weeks as all the apps have to be reinstalled/upgraded/reconfigured. It may not work at all.

If the system is WORKING then only a fool would bugger about with it. I have no intention of upgrading any of my WIn2K servers until such time as they are down for other reasons. And even then, only if I am sure that all the third party apps are guaranteed to work - most of our mission critical stuff is ONLY certified for WIn2k server edition. Mission-critical means if its down, we stop earning money. So down is not very good news.

Re:How ironic...

[Divide By Zero]

Just because you have a new version doesn't mean you're innovating. Countless industries crank out the same crap every year (auto, entertainment, etc.) There are no real innovations in the newest version that I'd need to have, so I'll save myself the time and expense of an OS upgrade.

If MS doesn't want customers complaining (not sure this is true, but...), they need but support useful products for as long as customers are willing to pay for them.

The upgrade treadmill

[dpilot]

IMHO this is a symptom of Microsoft taking something that ought to be plumbing or commodity, and turning it into a high-value, highly-visible product. The O.S. ought to be like plumbing and electrical wiring in your house, it just works. It's even more basic than the appliances, because you just assume that there's line current there when you plug in the toaster, or what have you. You just assume there are pipes behind that faucet and toilet. Furthermore, in the electrical case, you just assume there's a circuit breaker, GFI in the case of kitchen, bathroom, or outdoor.

Following the house analogy a little further, Microsoft has turned the house into, "Here's the house + basic plumbing fixtures + basic appliances." Actually, that's not too far from the way a house is bought, EXCEPT...
1: They've defined the whole package. When you buy a new house, you usually get to spec out fixtures and basic appliances.
2: They want you to re-purchase the whole thing every 3 years. Usually I only re-purchase as things wear out, and repair as needed.
3: They tend to bundle more appliances in with new releases. I'd never expect the toaster, food processor, and TV to be part of my "house" purchase.

Now compare the house model to Gentoo Linux. Gentoo has releases, but for the most part you can ignore them. At the lowest maintenance level, you just run "glsa-check" and keep up with security fixes. Higher maintenance levels are available if you want to stay closer to the bleeding edge, but at no point are you forced or expected to chuck it all and reinstall the OS. Some updates can be painful, like the new baselayout last week on my server. (The desktops took it just fine.) But it was still better than a reinstall.

OTOH, to be able to turn PVC piping and Romex into something people will line up for at midnight to buy is an interesting marketing feat, in itself.

NOT TRUE!

[BeerMonkey]

Mainstream support for W2K ends, not support. All this means is that there will be no more functionality changes or enhancements. Security patchas, phone support, and debug escalations are all still in place, exactly as they are today. Stop the madness.

It's not that easy...

[It doesn't come easy]

First of all, Microsoft tried a subscription scheme [cio.com] back in 2001 and no one switched, mostly because it was more expensive than the current pricing schedules (Microsoft got greedy and was trying to lock in their ridiculously high profit margins to the end of time). Plus, to make a subscription model make sense, businesses would have had to update on Microsoft's schedule. That idea will never fly with a business.

It is a very expensive and time consuming process to update the system for businesses because they have to test and probably update lots of other programs as well as the system. Some of the programs you don't find in the consumer market and there is no guarantee that the vendor has an updated version that works with the latest system. If the business is using programs in that category, then they have to either wait on the vendor to create an update or they have to switch to another program. Switching programs can create even more problems. All in all, upgrading the system when there is no real reason to do so just isn't done. Forget Windows 2000, I know of businesses still running DOS for some of their programs simply because the function the program provides still works just fine.

Bottom line, the goal of the last few Windows upgrades has been more to generate hardware sales for PC vendors and cash flow for Microsoft than it has been to introduce real innovation and savvy businesses recognise that. Longhorn doesn't look to be any more than an enhanced DRM platform that will require faster hardware at this point and that is not likely to make it a compelling upgrade for the average business (nor for an informed consumer). Microsoft is stuck in a rut, in the sense that it looks like Longhorn will be "more of the same" from Microsoft, and that just won't cut it anymore.

may indicate intent to upgrade

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows XP's slower adoption illustrates Microsoft's difficulty in competing with the popularity of its own software platform, and makes it more difficult for Microsoft to convince people to upgrade when Longhorn is released late next year.

On the contrary, XP's slow adoption might mean that business *are* planning to move to Longhorn, and don't see any reason for a short-lived move to XP given that it, unlike Longhorn(?), offers few benefits over W2K.

Re:Why upgrade?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also the last OS from Microsoft that actually treated users like they were using a computer instead of dumbing things down

So what you're saying is that you'd prefer an OS which turns off protection on n00bs by default, rather than allowing those who know what they're doing to configure more access appropriately?

How come that logic is incorrect when it comes to file-security and/or login-security, but when it comes to configuration-level security, all of a sudden we about-face?

I was raised to believe that you default to the more restrictive, so one has to take explicit actions to "open up" functionality which can potentially bite one in the ass. I recall MS being slammed time after time for not doing this in other areas.

You'd have me believe Win2K is preferable because its the last MS OS that didn't start taking this path any way seriously????

Re:Why upgrade?

[cakesy]

Agreed 100%. Microsoft should be shot for changing the logical search function of Windows 2000. Where is the logic behind it. Even though I come across it many times a day, it still shocks me how much harder they make my job. And I still don't feel confident that it is giving me the correct results...

Past Behavior

[GearheadX]

On top of this, MS is suffering from the aftereffects of its own campaign to get companies to upgrade every time a new version came out. There are still quite a few businesses and government agencies who are stinging from the horrible botch that was ME.

I know there are certainly still county and state government offices around where I live still using ME simply because nobody will budget OS upgrades.

The workers are NOT pleased.

That's what MS gets for preannouncing Longhorn...

[Dammital]

... and then slipping delivery from 2004 to 2005 to 2006 to whenever.

It's hard to justify upgrading your stable W2K server to XP if a successor product is just around the corner. Longhorn has been "just around the corner" for years.

It's common practice for software vendors to preannounce product in order to keep customers from looking elsewhere. But sometimes the tactic can backfire.

not 'other half', same half.

[oneiros27]

half of business are still running Windows 2000

Not half the computers. By the wording, one computer still running out of a company w/ 500 computers would still count as 'running Windows 2000'. So, it's entirely possible for that same half (and even some from the other half) to be running windows3.1, and still count as 'running Windows 2000'.

Of course, if you look at the AssetMatrix site, they say

Windows 2000 still has a greater than 50% market share in larger organizations

Unfortunately, my quick glance didn't turn up the full report from the study (I found their news release, which said to go to their website, which linked to the news release) , the data used, or the definition of 'market share' as used in the news release.

But to answer your question, from the news release:

Windows 95 and Windows 98 were reduced from a collective 28% to less than 5%;

Of course, we have no idea what those numbers mean, so it's fairly useless, other than to know that they've chosen a system that makes the numbers go down with time for Win95/98.

Re:MS are in a bit of a pickle really

[zoney_ie]

XP indeed uses more resources, without adding much value (other than being a more recent OS and hence more supported/MS-approved).

But in terms of functionality, it acts like 2K once the happyhappyshiny stuff is disabled - that's the point of my initial sentence. People act like they'll lose all that 2K is by moving to XP, just because of how XP's interface is arranged out of the box (note, in a corporate environment, you don't/shouldn't get "out of the box" anyways).

Not Surprising...

[GypC]

... considering that Win2K was Microsoft's first, and last, decent operating system.

Re:Why upgrade?

[karnal]

Actually, our defacto standard for work is Win2k.

When a new pc comes in, regardless of the "OEM" license, we have a site license for Win2k, and we use it. Not that XP Pro wouldn't work just as well; it would just take too much testing to move to that release.

Before anti-MS zealots get too excited

[ClosedSource]

The spin on this story seems to be that MS will be hurt because their customers aren't upgrading to Win XP.

The other fact that this story reveals is that many MS customers are so happy with Win 2K that they don't want to change. That inertia is far more damaging to the prospect of Linux on the desktop than it is to MS's bottom line.

Re:umm

[hhlost]

Windows 2K has actually been a great OS for the last year or two, and this is coming from a Windows hater. It takes a while for any software to come into its own and this is one of the many major reasons that Microsoft sucks: As soon as a version of Windows is getting to be stable and compatible, they bend the PC companies over the desk and ram the new, nowhere-near-ready version up their greedy asses.

Re:XP is pure EVIL

[dadragon]

Not even close. I have a box that runs perfectly when w2k is installed. When I put XP on it, the sound card doesnt work right (But I suppose a Soundblaster16 PCI card is a pretty esoteric card to test drivers aginst...),

What does the card not do? Work at all? Did you try installing the drivers that came with the card?

and SP2 destroys the machine's ability to connect to any sort of a network. (Again, a 3com 905 seriese NIC are pretty much unheard of, right?)

Again, neither XP nor 2K worked with my 3Com card out of the box, needed the drivers that were on the CD that came with it.

They even crippled some of the features that W2K had for XP, so they could sell more expensive versions of the OS. You can run a webserver from W2k Pro, try doing that with XP Pro.

Getting a web server working on 2K:

1) install 2K
2) once system is working, insert 2K CD into drive.
3) select "Add or remove Windows components"
4) click on IIS.

Getting a web server working on XP:

1) install XP
2) once system is working, insert XP CD into drive.
3) select "Add or remove Windows components"
4) click on IIS.

Wow. That sure was tough. Now, try setting up an ethernet bridge on 2K Pro, XP Pro does it quite nicely, but with 2K you need a server version. Same deal with RDP.

Re:Not only that

[itchy92]

... I've never really heard the argument that it takes too much work to get Linux to *look* how you like it, rather that it just takes too much goddamned effort to get it to work.

Every few months, I'll stumble across an image of Tux and get an itch to install the latest release of some distro (I research and find out which one will likely meet my needs). And every time, without fail, I'll be back on Windows within a few days. Either I can't get vital drivers to work (my system is a couple years old, so it's not cutting-edge stuff), or I can't install the software that I'd like, or I simply can't do most of the stuff I do in Windows, other than basic web/music/email stuff.

And too often I see people saying, "well it's open-source so you can code some modules and recompile your kernel, or write your own programs or--"... no. I'm past the days where I tinker with my machine just for the hell of it, now I use my machine to get done the many different things I need to get done, like graphic design, 3D modelling, audio recording and manipulation, programming, and a bunch of other stuff. I want my OS to work, and to allow me to work with minimal effort. And Linux simply does not provide me that luxury. Granted, Windows has some issues, but it's still the best general-use, workstation/desktop OS available.