Windows 10 End-of-Service Deadline Coming Fast are You Ready?
Over two-thirds of enterprises are still using Windows 10, despite looming end-of-service deadline.
A little under a year from now, on Oct. 14, 2025, Windows 10 faces an expiration date.
That’s when Microsoft has said it will officially cut off support for the operating system in favor of its successor, Windows 11. Just one problem—the vast majority of enterprises haven’t upgraded, even as the clock keeps ticking.
Recent data from Lansweeper shows Windows 11 adoption has sped up dramatically but has yet to gain even a full quarter of the Windows market. Since September 2023, Windows 11’s share has grown from 8% to 23%, while Windows 10’s share has dropped from 81% to 68%.
There are only a handful of ways for enterprises to still gain critical security updates after Microsoft deprecates Windows 10. One of them is the Long-Term Servicing Channel (LTSC), which Lansweeper’s data shows just 3.5% of enterprises are using. Another is Extended Service Updates (ESU), in which customers pay for continued security fixes, but which is quite expensive at $61 per device in the first year and rising to $244 by year three.
Michael Cherry, the Windows analyst at IT information and advisory service Directions on Microsoft, said some organizations may be playing a risky game of chicken, hoping that the tech giant grants a stay of execution to the old OS.
“There are a lot of projects [competing] now for budget money,” Cherry said, ranging from legacy IT upgrades to other Microsoft products like Copilot and Azure. “And when you look at the Windows operating system, you kind of get into this situation—where is it really broke? If it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.”
While Windows 11 does offer enhanced security via Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 hardware requirements, Cherry said, that’s the only draw that he sees luring customers to upgrade. On the other hand, meeting those hardware requirements often requires the purchase of a new PC—Cherry said relying on unsupported workarounds to dodge the TPM mandate would be “crazy.”
Historically, it has been possible to override Windows 11’s TPM and hardware requirements. Microsoft has tried to prevent this by removing workarounds, though so far users have managed to find new ones. Bypassing TPM could, however, break Windows functionality in unforeseeable ways now or in the future, which is far from ideal in an enterprise environment.
It’s not the licensing costs that customers are primarily seeking to avoid by sticking with Windows 10, Cherry added, but the price of new hardware and staff man-hours.
“You’re going to run into hardware compatibilities,” Cherry said. “You’re going to run into some driver issues. There might be some issues with legacy applications…Your high costs are going to be the people costs, the hardware costs.”
