Windows 10 telemetry will be used to drive enterprise upgrades with Upgrade Analytics
Rightly or wrongly, telemetry in Windows 10 has been roundly and soundly criticized. But while the feature may be a privacy concern for some, Microsoft says that it is using the data gathered to provide advice to would-be Windows 10 users about driver and application readiness.
This is something that is aimed at enterprise users for whom Microsoft recognizes that certain apps are mission-critical for businesses. This is why the company has launched Upgrade Analytics to "provide customers with insights which allow them to [...] mitigate potential problems".
The aim, ultimately, is to get as many enterprise users moved over to Windows 10 as possible. In a blog post, Microsoft's Marc-Andrea Klimaschewski writes:
"In order to drive a Windows Upgrade project efficiently customers are looking for data that allows to evaluate their application and driver ecosystem using a risk balanced approach. While some applications are business critical and need to be validated before upgrading the operating system since they are widely deployed and frequently used, some applications may only be deployed on a handful of machines. In a typical organization, there are hundreds of applications and testing all of them before an OS Upgrade is cost- and time prohibitive".
The public preview of Upgrade Analytics started to roll out yesterday and provides:
- Up-to date application and driver inventory, including usage data
- Information about known application and driver issues as well as guidance on how to mitigate them
- A way to track whether an application or driver is ready Windows 10 in your organization
- Per-Computer readiness information which you use to target computers for Windows 10 deployments
Photo credit: Stanislaw Mikulski / Shutterstock