Microsoft starts a renewed Windows 10 push aimed at businesses
Microsoft has been quick to brag about the adoption rate of Windows 10, proudly crowing every time another few million devices make the upgrade. We're currently sitting at around the 200 million mark (apparently), but the bulk of this number is made up of home users. Now Microsoft wants to encourage more businesses to make the jump from Windows 7 and Windows 8.1.
The next leg of the company's aggressive Windows 10 campaign is aimed squarely at SMBs who can now expect to be pestered by the "Get Windows 10" app in the same way as non-business users have for the last six months. Aware that taking the upgrade process out of the hands of IT admins might not go down too well, Microsoft is providing a way to opt out of these notifications.
The app is not going to be pushed to enterprise users as they are not entitled to a free upgrade to Windows 10, but other business users can expect to see it soon providing they meet a few criteria. In addition to running Windows 7 or 8.1, a computer must be configured to receive updates directly from the Windows Update service, and have joined an Active Directory domain.
Microsoft says:
Because of ongoing customer requests from many small businesses and other small organizations to easily take advantage of the free upgrade, we will soon make the Get Windows 10 app available to them as well.
Like consumers, small businesses and organizations will soon be able to receive notifications about the upgrade and then directly upgrade to Windows 10 through an easy-to-use interface right from the system tray on their Windows 7 Pro or Windows 8.1 Pro PC.
We will begin to roll out the "Get Windows 10" app to additional devices [...] in the US later this month and in additional markets shortly thereafter.
The company provides details of how to prevent the installation of the "Get Windows 10" app for businesses who either want to take care of the upgrade manually, or who just want to avoid Windows 10 altogether.
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