If a Japanese Insurance Company Can Do It, Why Can't You Migrate Off of Windows XP?

According to a Microsoft customer spotlight report today, a Japanese insurance agency, Meiji Yasuda Life, is in the process of migrating 30,000 Windows XP computers to Windows 8 tablets. Not only is that an enormous number of Windows XP migrations, but that's also a crazy number of tablets that will run Windows 8.

Microsoft's full press release: Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance to provide 30,000 Fujitsu tablets with Windows 8 to its sales personnel in Japan’s largest deployment

Many organizations in the US, that are still running Windows XP, aren't even considering Windows 8 as the next step in the upgrade process, but instead are turning to Windows 7. Honestly, to me, that's not an issue as long as the migration project is in motion.

Microsoft's customer spotlight release suggests that Meiji Yasuda will begin using the Windows 8 tablets in September 2013, which seems to indicate that the migration is still going on. There's three big gotchas here that I'd like to know how the insurance company was able to surmount. First, users are going from PCs to tablets. Secondly, they are migrating from Windows XP to a much different Windows 8. And, third, there's 30,000 users that need training and support. It would be quicker to just airdrop how-to pamphlets into the crowd of employees all gathered in a football stadium somewhere.  I'd be highly interested to see if Microsoft posted a follow-up in 6 months on the project's success.

We have an active survey running, asking readers for their own reasons why the Windows XP migration is taking so long, considering Windows XP will experience a sudden death in April 2014. Drop out to the following link and let us know the issues that are slowing your migration.

What Is Bogging Down Your Windows XP Migration Plans?