Summary: Microsoft
will need to work hard to convince enterprise users in Africa to migrate off
older versions of Windows onto Windows 8.
Windows 8 adoption among enterprise
IT users in sub-Saharan Africa is likely to be slow and patchy, with most of
the appetite for the new operating system to be found among organisations with
large mobile workforces.
While analysts and
Microsoft business partners said Windows 8 offers a compelling bridge between
consumer devices and enterprise IT infrastructure, they questioned whether the
value of the new operating system is persuasive enough to prompt enterprise
users in Africa to migrate in the short to medium term
future.
Mark Walker, director for Middle
East, Africa and Turkey at IDC, said that the excitement of a new platform may
help to bump PC sales in the region for the fourth quarter after a sluggish
third quarter. But he said that it is unlikely that many enterprises who have
not already been testing Windows 8 will adopt it straightaway.
"The ecosystem is more
complicated than it was when companies were migrating to Windows XP or
Windows 7. There is a lot of pushback from the businesspeople, a lot of
confusion about the impact on the architecture. The decision to migrate is not
a straightforward discussion," Walker said.
African companies
grappling with the management and security implications of the cloud and bring
your own device (BYOD) are ones who may find Windows 8 most compelling, said
Walker. "From a technology point of view, Windows 8 is an impressive
platform. But the on-ramp will be slower."
Walker said that adoption rates will
vary markedly among different African countries, with faster adoption of the
platform in those such as Kenya and South Africa where bandwidth is greater
since some many of the key features of Windows 8 are designed for an
always-online world.
Availability and cost of bandwidth
are key, agreed Paul Conradie, MD of southern and eastern African distribution
group Comztek. Kenya, for example, can be expected to adopt Windows 8 faster
than Zamibia, where speeds lag and costs are still high.
The speed of adoption of Windows 8
will depend on the nature of the business, said Conradie. Those with large
mobile workforces will adopt the platform quite fast to take advantage of the
commonality it will bring between tablet, smartphone, desktop and notebook
platforms. "They are going to say, 'our security and infrastructure has
been set up for Windows 7', so moving to Windows 8 is not a big leap."
With more wireless devices shipping
in Africa than traditional PCs, Microsoft needs to focus on the apps ecosystem
for Windows 8 to compete effectively with the likes of Google and Apple, said
Bradley Bunch, chief innovation officer at Dimension Data, a systems
integration and outsourcing firm with a presence in more than a dozen African
countries.
Windows 8 may lag Android and iOS in
apps availability, but Microsoft’s large powerful OEM, distributor and reseller
base across the continent will prove to be a major advantage for the company,
he added.
"Windows 8 represents an
interesting bridge from enterprise to consumer devices. Google and Apple have
been winning the race because Microsoft has been slow to respond to the changes
in how consumers use technology," said Bunch.
"Consumerisation is affecting
companies' operational costs because the number of devices and platforms [to be
managed] has increased. Offering mobile devices and PCs on the same platform is
a good strategy, but is it too late?"
Many of Dimension
Data's big African customers are still using Windows XP and the company is
involved in a number of migrations from XP and Vista to Windows 7. Dimension
Data expects Windows 7 to be the enterprise operating system of choice for the
foreseeable future, with Windows 8 coming into many organisations through
tablets and smartphones, said Bunch.
One observer who is upbeat about the
prospects for Windows 8 in Africa is Traci Maynard, GM of the software division
at Tarsus Technologies, a South Africa-based IT distributor with branches in
Botswana, Namibia and Mauritius. Windows 8 introduces a range of long-awaited a
number of security features that CIOs will want to embrace, said Maynard.
These include key enhancements to
the BitLocker and AppLocker features as well as the RemoteFX technology that
allows Microsoft Virtual Desktop Infrastructure remote desktops to run
graphics-intensive applications through a virtualised graphics card hosted on
the server.
By Lance Harris
for African
Enterprise
Zdnet.com