Windows 11 rollout at Microsoft: 190,000 upgrades in five weeks

What do you do if you want to motivate large companies to switch to Windows 11 and you are a large company yourself? You set a good example. According to Microsoft, it switched 190,000 workstations to Windows 11 within five weeks without any major incidents.

Of course, you have to regard this self-experience report for what it is: unrestrainedly embellished marketing. When Microsoft says that there were no incidents and that practically nobody called the hotline, then you don’t have to believe it, because Microsoft doesn’t just have geeks and nerds who always know how to help themselves somehow.

The story is interesting for another reason: While customers are otherwise made tempted to switch to a new operating system with the many innovations, as Microsoft is doing with Windows 11 for consumers, it is exactly the other way around here: Microsoft recommends the quick one to companies Switching to Windows 11 mainly with the argument that it is no different than Windows 10 anyway.

The driver model has not changed, so there should be no incompatible hardware. All programs that ran on Windows 10 also work on Windows 11, the tools for deploying and managing Windows 11 in companies are also the same.

Microsoft upgraded Windows 11 to the 190,000 workstations mentioned. The download took place in the background, at the end you were prompted to restart and on average you were able to work again after 20 minutes under Windows 11, they say. There was also the option of performing the upgrade overnight and, so to speak, calling it a day with Windows 10 and resuming work the next morning with Windows 11.

I have already accompanied three large rollout projects in my professional career. From NT to XP, from XP to Windows 7 and then from Windows 7 to Windows 10. “The last migration” was the promise made by Microsoft in connection with Windows 10, analogous to the advertising slogan of the “last version of Windows”, from which Microsoft now tried desperately to claim that you would never have said it that way.

While Windows 10 will not have been the last or penultimate version of Windows, the promise of the “last migration” could hold for a while longer, as indeed Microsoft recommends upgrading as the default method. In the previous rollout projects in which I was involved, a standard image was always created and the computers were “fueled” with it, i.e. set up again. So far I haven’t heard anything about whether, when and how Windows 11 will be rolled out in our company.

For companies that are hesitant, Microsoft has another recommendation that was previously frowned upon, namely the mixed operation of two different Windows versions in the company. Distributing and managing Windows 10 and Windows 11 in a company at the same time is child’s play, says Microsoft.

Disclaimer: We received the information in this article from Microsoft in advance under the NDA.