SolutionsPT urges businesses: act now on XP deadline

Paul O'Connell, Managed Services Product and Delivery Manager, warns that ignoring today's deadline could be catastrophic: "This is certainly a concern as there is still a massive installed base of Windows XP, especially in our industrial markets. Only a few months ago Microsoft was telling us that 50 per cent of SMBs remained unaware that XP support expired in 2014. Running non-supported software puts businesses, and customer data, at risk."

SolutionsPT outlines the key risks as:

• Security: Without critical security updates, systems may become vulnerable to harmful viruses, malware and other malicious activity which can steal or damage business date and information
• Unplanned downtime: The risks of system failure and business disruption could increase because of the end of support, lack of supported software, and the increasing age of hardware running Windows XP
• No technical support: When problems arise, online and phone-based technical support will no longer be available to you or your IT partner, leaving business to deal with the issue alone
• Reduced compatibility: Many software and hardware vendors will no longer support products that are running on Windows XP as they are unable to get the Windows XP updates created to fix issues

SolutionsPT is offering all of its customers an audit of their systems to enable them to advise on how to safely extend life or migrate.

Paul O'Connell, Managed Services Product and Delivery Manager at SolutionsPT: "As specialists in industrial IT we recognise that it is not always practical to migrate systems to a different operating system as sometimes the application is simply not supported, the required resource and skills are unavailable or the cost of re-testing is prohibitive. However, there are solutions and we would advise customers to get in touch so we can assist them in either safely extending the life of XP, or working together to implement and effective migration strategy."

Businesses looking for advice on XP migration should email [email protected] or visit www.solutionspt.com.