Digital Successes

Ms CEO Satya NadellaBusiness InsiderMicrosoft is convinced that Windows 10 is a big hit, but the true test of that will be if it can convince its most important customers - businesses - to upgrade.

You can find signs that Windows 10 could be a success with them.

On Monday, Microsoft announced that more than 76% of its enterprise customers are at least screening Windows 10 (“in active pilots, ” as Microsoft says).

22 million businesses and education customers are actually using Windows 10, the organization says. It's not clear how many of those are businesses and how many of them are usually schools, but in November, Microsoft said that 14 million Windows 10 products were up and running on enterprise computers.

Most analysts expected businesses to get serious about upgrading their employees to Windows 10 in 2016, and when 76% of them are in pilots, that is certainly a sign that things are on track.

Why Windows at the job matters for Microsoft Getting businesses to run Windows 10 is essential to Microsoft for all sorts of reasons.

Unlike consumers who were offered a free upgrade (pestered might be a better word), businesses aren't completely off the catch when it comes to paying for Windows. Most of them can upgrade to Windows 10 with regard to “free” because they've already bought enterprise contracts that allow them to utilize any supported version of Windows. But they do have to pay Microsoft periodic license fees for every PC operating Windows so they can keep running the most up-to-date and advanced business edition.

Plus, when businesses are using the latest version of the PC operating system, that will encourages them to upgrade all their various other Microsoft business software to present versions, whether that's Office 365, Windows Server, or Microsoft's SQL Server database, and those upgrades will usually incur additional fees.

It's true that Microsoft is slowly weaning itself from its Genuine Windows License Key empire, and encouraging businesses to rent all their Microsoft business software from Microsoft's cloud, whether that's Microsoft Workplace 365, SQL Server, or Microsof company Dynamics (its competitor to Salesforce).

When businesses use its fog up, Microsoft makes money even if the company's employees don't use Windows Computers.

But Microsoft makes far more cash if it can keep its business customers in its Windows ecosystem. And that does indeed begin with the PC.

NOW WATCH: The key to making new habits stick