Microsoft will end support for the now-antique but still extremely popular desktop OS on 8 April next year, after which date no new patches or bug fixes will be issued.

Research conducted in October, in the U.K. indicates that:
– only a third of the IT decision makers who planned to migrate their remaining Windows XP devices before April next year are “extremely confident” that they will complete the migration in time.

– another third said they were “not even close” to having the migration complete

– a fifth said they are only partway through the project and would complete it after Microsoft support had ended.

Only six percent of respondents said they had already migrated all their devices from XP.

Nearly three-quarters of respondents to the survey said they would migrate their devices to Windows 7.

Reasons for not migrating so far include the level of disruption it would cause to the business – mentioned by 42 percent – as well as the cost, cited by 34 percent. Analysts warn that organisations that delay migration from XP too late, they risk security threats to the unpatched operating system and may make rash cloud choices as result.

However, it’s also possible that because they need to move away from XP, companies may be more willing to adopt cutting-edge technologies previously unavailable.

What is also important to consider is what support you will get from application vendors if you are running the application on an unsupported operating system. Chances are you will be asked to upgrade as the first response. 8 April 2014 will be here soon be ready – now is probably the last chance to get an upgrade into your next year budget.

The way that we consume information and utilize resources is rapidly changing. Are t he days of the PC, numbered as we move rapidly into an era of mobility. Application-centric workloads let all users utilize apps and data in harmony. It’s now about data-on-demand, nay tome anywhere, and this will continue to drive forward.adoption of the cloud and its supporting technologies

There are generally 4 models:

Private. Host equipment and present a cloud model which is managed and controlled by the internal IT team. The resources, both physical and virtual, belong to the organization.

Public.Some organizations choose to work with an outside cloud provider for their hosting needs. Applications, servers and workloads are all provisioned from resources owned by the third party provider. This is the basis of a pay-as-you-grow model.

Community or cooperative clouds. This goes beyond provisioning space in a public cloud. Organizations can test and work on a cloud platform which is secure, “dedicated” and even compliant with certain regulations. Instead of giving each organization their own server in the cloud for an app, the hosting company allows multiple customers to connect into their environment and logically segments their sessions.

Hybrid. This cloud model is adopted by numerous organizations to leverage the direct benefits of both a private and public cloud environment. In a hybrid cloud, companies leverage third party cloud providers in either a full or partial manner. This increases the flexibility of computing. The hybrid cloud environment is capable of providing on-demand, externally-provisioned scalability. Augmenting a traditional private cloud with the resources of a public cloud is used to manage any unexpected surges in workload. When an organization has peak usage times, it offload its user base to cloud-based computers which are provisioned only on demand. This means that these resources are only being used as needed. So, organizations can keep a portion of their cloud environment private, but still use elements of the public cloud offering.

You’ll increasingly notice that you’re cross-connecting with more resources, more users and a lot more devices all over the world. In many cases, the workloads, data and applications your accessing isn’t even located on a corporate-owned data center. It’s all connected through an ever-expanding hybrid cloud infrastructure.

So what’s the driving force behind the hybrid cloud boom?
Software-defined technologies. A big reason for the hybrid cloud evolution is the software-defined layer. SDN bridges many of the cloud computing communications by better integrating complex routing and switching methodologies at the logical layer, software-defined networking allows administrators to create vast hybrid cloud networks capable of advanced inter-connectivity.

Greater amounts of resources. . We have more bandwidth, new ways to connect, and greater amounts of infrastructure convergence. As the integration of storage, networking and computing capabilities increased – so did the available delivery methods of cloud computing. Hybrid cloud models are now able to cross-connect with distributed data centers and utilize vast amounts of bandwidth which has now been optimized by virtual WANOP appliances.

Logical and physical integration. New APIs let IT professionals rethink how applications and resources should integrate. We can eliminate entire layers to allow for greater application and data communication.

For business, the infrastructure will be simplified and easier to manage.
For the end users, they will have direct access into their resources, applications and data.
For both, there will be direct operational and productivity benefits by utilizing the power of a hybrid cloud model.

Costs are dropping but make sure you know what you are getting into and why because transactional base charges can soar.