And the countdown is on – by the time you are read this there is less than a year left on the clock for Windows XP. April 8, 2014 marks the end of a marvelous 12-year run when support for the popular operating system officially ends. Rest assured, mark my words – there will be no further grace period, no extension possible because Microsoft has already done so in the past. Unfortunately that doesn’t mean that the world will be Windows XP-free after that date. Quite the contrary, there are still an overwhelming amount of XP systems that are still running today and there will still be a great number that will be running on April 9, 2014. That is a huge risk issue, particularly when you consider that while a lot of the XP systems are still running in the enterprise. If you haven’t made the move yet, it may be too late already, but there are some things that can be done.

Let’s start off by taking a look at why businesses may still be stuck on XP. Resources are a big issue – having cash, people, knowledge to make the migration is pretty common in a lot of cases and it holds true here as well. Another is software issues – it happens more than you think, for example a custom piece of software just has not or cannot be updated to Windows 7 or Windows 8. It could be a vendor-supplied piece of software that you need, but the vendor is out of business, constrained by regulatory matters, or just hasn’t completed their support program for going beyond XP themselves. So there’s a number of reasons why Windows XP persists in the enterprise, we just have to deal with these issues.

Consumers may continue to run XP for a while longer for many of the same reasons practically. Seeing no reason to upgrade as their XP system runs fine would be one such example. They have their email, web, accounting or any number of software products that run just fine for their needs. However this won’t last forever. Sooner or later hardware will fail, software will require upgrading and detect that they are running an unsupported operating system, basically everyone will move on. Until that point, the systems that are out there in consumer hands that continue on XP beyond support create a huge security risk – for example just look at the zombie-net of compromised PCs that are a product of poorly patched, unprotected or outdated systems.

Risk – riding XP beyond the support date means some big headaches for the enterprise. Looking at security, it’s clear that once vulnerabilities come out (which indeed happens all the time), there will be no patches from Microsoft. Eventually endpoint security and applications will no longer be able to update as well, as they count on the operating system and supporting system configuration to get up to date. This means new holes in the security and applications will emerge. It could also mean unstable application performance, or an inability for the system to run latest applications and use their features. Any one system that accesses a corporate network in this state is a potential risk. Regardless, you can see how this can easily and quickly pile up, so let’s talk about some options making that migration move.

Fortunately, a majority of organizations have gone ahead and traveled this path and at this stage of the game, we can key off some important work that has been done there. Officially, Microsoft recommends an upgrade path to Windows 7, but one could move to Windows 8 as well. Without a doubt, the prospect of migration can be tricky, it requires a lot of resources, a plan, and a good deal of expertise – not only with Windows itself, but the applications that the enterprise is running on them – any and all of these may be in short supply, so we look for some contingency and solutions to deal with this.

It is certainly possible that some applications can and do run perfectly well in Windows XP Mode, a virtualized app and desktop environment available locally on certain Windows 7 systems. There is also a Windows XP compatibility mode that has been available on Windows 7 since the beginning. Only testing will tell you for sure. Desktop Virtualization (VDI) is one solution that is answering a lot of questions convincingly. I recently talked to one VDI solution provider that was able to flip the switch and migrate a company over a weekend. Apps that are still bound to Windows XP can be streamed or run locally within the VDI interface. This opens the door for some interesting Software as a Service (SaaS) options as well. As always, any of these types of solutions require proper assessment, evaluation, and planning and it has to work for your particular situation.

To summarize – there are some in the industry has less than a year as of today to figure this all out, but there are a number of ways to navigate this to an agreeable solution.