The countdown is on. Once April 8th 2014 comes around, technical assistance for the now 12 year old Windows XP Operating System (OS) will no longer be available. That means from April 8th automatic updates, including security updates, will be no more. You can continue to use the operating system, but you are essentially on your own when it comes to virus protection and updates.
As well as this, any company that made software for XP in the past is likely to stop supporting the applications that run on it as they will no longer be obliged to provide updates for a now obsolete operating system. This means that many line-of-business applications you use on a daily basis will be affected. These applications may still work on XP if you continue to run it, but you run the risk of the software being vulnerable to attack, and therefore loss of data. Updated drivers for XP will also be difficult to find, if you can find them at all. With the odds stacked up against you, sticking with XP could turn out to be a costly risk for your business.
Putting off the inevitable move could also mean that your company has to pay a higher price for IT Support due to the lack of performance of a legacy
system such as XP. As well as this, it is likely that the hardware used to run XP is as old as the Operating System itself, taking time to boot up and shut down, and inevitably impacting staff productivity. A move to a newer OS coupled with a more modern machine will mean more productivity as the machine can boot up in seconds, resulting in reduced power consumption and most importantly reduced support costs.
The world has changed in the 12 years since the birth of XP – we now have smartphones and apps and high speed broadband instead of dial-up. You wouldn’t be without your smartphone today and dial-up internet is unthinkable. So why stick with an outdated OS that no longer cuts the mustard and leaves you wide open to the wild west of viruses and hacker exploits?
There are a host of options available to you. A member of the ActionPoint team will be happy to help you make the right choice. Call on 1850 228 466 or email info@actionpoint.ie for a no obligations discussion.
