You know it’d be fast and furious as we skidded into the April 8, 2014 end-of-support (EOS) deadline for Windows XP (and Office 2003). It’s been a long year preaching the XP migration opportunity to the partner crowd, and many have heard the good word. But many haven’t. Here’s the good news: the party continues.
Looking forward, I see most of the Windows XP migration work ahead, not behind us. It turns out the econometric model that rational small business owners would plan for the April 8th EOS deadline was wrong. Both SMB owners and SMB IT Pros proved too busy to effectively meet the deadline, and the real work starts April 9th moving forward. This revised forecast is based on our own research both inside and outside of Microsoft, plus extensive domestic and worldwide travel. I’ll go into the details of this in my keynote speech at the Channel Pro SMB Forum on April 9th in Southern California.
Looking backwards, allow me to recap what we’ve done as the hardest working community in SMB to promote your profitability via XP migrations.
These past thirty days, I and two other professional trainers have traveled over 68,753 miles (I counted here) delivering “executive briefings” to top SMB IT Pro resellers in over nine countries (below) with another 21 countries to go by June 30th. So far, we've gone around the world 2.75 times! This half-day invitation-only workshop is really an “Executive MBA” collaborative session amongst top performers discussing mobile devices, Windows 8.1, Office 365 and Windows XP Migrations. It’s a case of “if you have to ask” then you weren’t invited.
- Singapore
- Malaysia
- Philippines
- Hong Kong
- Brazil
- Australia
- New Zealand
- UK
- Mexico
Last year, during the fall, SMB Nation trainers travelled over 50,000 miles delivering 44 Windows XP Migration Madness sessions to SMB IT Pro and customer audiences in the US. Typically hosted at the training centers inside the Microsoft Stores, the opportunity was handed to you, the SMB IT Pro to capitalize on.
The 11th annual SMB Nation Fall conference (October 2013) focused on Windows XP, Office 2003 and SBS 2003 migrations. Students left with a “certified” migration expert status to demonstrate the clock time they invested in to supplement their professional experience.
Add to that the countless blogs, speeches, Facebook posts and tweets that were regularly dispatched as part of a rolling thunder strategy to motive folks to migrate, and I’d offer our technology evangelical outreach has made the world a better place. Warring parties in the SMB community and beyond have worked cooperatively to try to solve the Windows XP “problem.”
So how did we do? The short answer is I don’t know yet. The world did not treat this like a Y2K “head for the hills” event, but essentially ignored that April 8th deadline. Coming to an XP end point near you soon will be a hacker seeking to harass you, and at that time, we’ll have a better understanding of where it all ended up.
Bottom line: this past year we’ve done our best to educate you on the windows XP migration opportunity. It still exists. Now it’s in your hands. Find that internal fortitude to capitalize on the chaos caused by the XP EOS milestone. You’ll be better off both technically and financially for it.
I’ll end on this philosophical note. Many old-timers in the community asserted the Windows XP migration opportunity was a myth. My response? The person who says it cannot be done, should not interrupt the person doing it!
(Pictured: New Zealand Modern Tour Executive Briefing Session)
