Windows 10 ESU Costs vs Migration: A Practical IT Guide for 2025

Free security updates for many editions of Windows 10 end on October 14, 2025, and a raft of new vendor guidance and vendor-priced Extended Security Updates (ESUs) means companies that can’t—or won’t—move are facing a material, avoidable bill. A back-of-the-envelope model circulated by Nexthink and picked up by multiple outlets puts first‑year ESU exposure for commercial Windows 10 devices at roughly $7.3 billion, based on a combination of Microsoft device counts, market-share estimates and per-device ESU list pricing. The headline is dramatic, but the deeper story is practical and messy: businesses must weigh hard dollars for ESUs against migration costs, hardware refreshes, cloud‑PC options and cyber‑risk exposure—and plan a measurable, human‑centric migration rather than a compliance sprint. (itpro.com, learn.microsoft.com)

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Background​

Microsoft has formally set October 14, 2025 as the end of support date for mainstream Windows 10 editions not on Long‑Term Servicing Channels. After that date Microsoft will stop providing routine technical assistance and quality/security updates for devices that are not enrolled in an ESU program or otherwise covered through specific cloud offerings. The company’s guidance frames ESU as a short‑term bridge rather than a long‑term substitute for migration to Windows 11 or cloud‑hosted Windows 365/Cloud PCs. (support.microsoft.com, learn.microsoft.com)
At the same time Microsoft has made consumer‑facing ESU options available in an unprecedented way: a paid consumer ESU channel at approximately $30 for one year, plus one‑year free options tied to cloud backup or Microsoft Rewards, and enterprise ESU pricing at $61 per device for Year One (which doubles in Years Two and Three). Those consumer enrollment pathways were explicitly promoted through the Windows Experience blog and Microsoft consumer pages in mid‑2025. (blogs.windows.com, learn.microsoft.com)
Why this matters: hundreds of millions of PCs globally still run Windows 10. Public market trackers such as StatCounter show Windows 10 maintaining a large share of desktop Windows installations (around mid‑40s percent as of mid‑2025), even as Windows 11 adoption climbs. Microsoft’s own public device tallies have been the subject of interpretation and debate, but the scale is unquestionably large—meaning that even relatively modest per‑device ESU fees translate into large aggregate sums. (gs.statcounter.com, tomshardware.com)

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What Nexthink calculated — and what it really means​

Nexthink’s public messaging (reported widely by press outlets) assembled a simple model:

• Microsoft: “over 1.4 billion monthly active devices” (company figure used as starting point).
• Nexthink: 30% of those devices are commercial or public‑sector endpoints, yielding roughly 420 million enterprise devices.
• Using market‑share proxies (StatCounter) and Nexthink customer telemetry, Nexthink estimated about 181 million enterprise devices still running Windows 10 mid‑2025, and projected that figure to drop to ~121 million by the October deadline if observed decline trends continued.
• Multiply 121 million devices × $61 (Year‑One ESU list price for commercial customers) = ~$7.3 billion in Year‑One ESU obligation. (itpro.com, gs.statcounter.com)

Plainly stated: that $7.3 billion is a directional estimate, not an audited Microsoft invoice. The model is useful because it highlights scale, but it depends on a string of assumptions—device counts, enterprise fractions, market‑share proxies, and the choice to treat the Year‑One per‑device fee as a universal rate for all enterprise devices. Each assumption is contestable and materially affects the outcome. IT teams should treat the headline as a planning signal, not an exact budget line. (itpro.com, windowsforum.com)
Caveats worth calling out:

• Microsoft does not publish a public per‑device registry of enterprise Windows 10 installations; the company’s public figures are aggregate and periodically rephrased, which has produced confusion about “1.4 billion” versus “over a billion” counts. Press commentary has dissected that wording. Use the device totals only as high‑level inputs, not definitive counts. (tomshardware.com, windowslatest.com)
• ESU list pricing is widely published for volume licensing, but enterprise agreements, cloud entitlements (Windows 365, Azure Virtual Desktop, certain Azure VM families) and negotiated discounts can meaningfully reduce per‑device costs—or eliminate them for covered cloud VMs. The $61 figure is Year‑One list price for organizations that purchase ESUs; it is not the universal final price. (learn.microsoft.com)
• The Nexthink projection assumes current trends persist. Migration surge events, buy‑one‑get‑one‑free OEM programs, or large cloud migrations could reduce the eligible installed base faster than Nexthink modeled. Conversely, regulatory or industry constraints may force some organizations to hang on to legacy kits longer than expected. (itpro.com)

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The economics of ESU vs migration: a short primer​

The finance question facing CIOs is binary at device level: pay for an ESU bridge, or transition that device to a supported platform. The simple math hides many complications.
Key cost vectors IT leaders must compare:

• Direct ESU fees (per device) for each year of coverage. For commercial customers Year‑One is $61/device via volume licensing; Year Two is $122 and Year Three $244 if coverage continues. ESUs are cumulative—if you start late you pay prior years. Microsoft documentation sets this structure. (learn.microsoft.com)
• Hardware refresh: replacing a non‑compatible PC with a Windows 11‑capable device. This is an up‑front capital cost and includes procurement, imaging, logistics, and end‑of‑life disposition (which has environmental and compliance impacts).
• In‑place upgrades: some devices can be upgraded by firmware/BIOS and memory/SSD swaps to meet Windows 11 minimums, but these per‑device upgrade costs vary widely by model and geography. Nexthink’s readiness tooling explicitly models memory/SSD/TPM readiness and provides upgrade vs replace cost tallies. (docs-v6.nexthink.com)
• Migration project costs: application remediation, testing, driver vetting, staging, user training, helpdesk overhead and pilot programs. These are real labor costs and they scale with device count and application complexity.
• Cloud‑hosted alternatives: Windows 365 Cloud PCs or Azure Virtual Desktop can eliminate ESU fees for VMs running in those clouds, but carry ongoing cloud subscription charges and sometimes large change management overhead. Microsoft explicitly exempts many cloud‑hosted Windows 10 VMs from ESU fees. (learn.microsoft.com)
• Risk premium: running out‑of‑support software increases exposure to zero‑day attacks, compliance fines, and operational disruption. Those costs are probabilistic but serious and should be included in expected‑loss calculations.

When firms model these vectors, the break‑even point depends heavily on negotiated ESU price, the average lifecycle cost of replacement devices, and the complexity of the application estate. For some fleets—older hardware with limited upgrade options—paying ESU for a short bridge while planning replacement makes sense. For others, a carefully budgeted migration and selective refresh beats multi‑year ESU costs that double annually.

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Stability and migration risk: Windows 11 is not a turnkey swap​

Nexthink’s customer telemetry has been used to argue that Windows 11 currently exhibits higher incident and crash rates than Windows 10 in some fleets—an assertion repeated in vendor briefings and press coverage. The specifics reported (for example, system crash and hard‑reset differentials) come from Nexthink’s cross‑customer analytics and internal dashboards rather than a global registry, and they illustrate a practical reality: migrations frequently surface driver, firmware and configuration issues that were dormant under an older OS baseline. (docs-v6.nexthink.com, inkl.com)
Operational lessons from that evidence:

• Driver and firmware inventory matters. Many post‑migration incidents trace to outdated vendor drivers or OEM firmware that were never updated while the device ran Windows 10.
• In‑place upgrades can carry technical debt. Applications with deep kernel or legacy drivers (VPNs, security agents, virtualization filters) are the typical culprits during feature upgrades.
• Human experience is the end metric. If a migration projects to increase helpdesk tickets, slow logons, or reduce application availability, IT must budget for user experience remediation and not treat an OS swap as a one‑time checklist. Nexthink’s Digital Employee Experience (DEX) frameworks stress measurement and remediation pre‑ and post‑migration for this reason. (docs-v6.nexthink.com, docs.nexthink.com)

That said, stability differences are not immutable verdicts about Windows 11. Many organizations have migrated successfully by doing three things well: testing across representative hardware models, instituting a staged pilot and rollback plan, and provisioning driver/firmware remediation pipelines (often driven by OEM tools). When these processes are followed, the experience delta shrinks and nets positive productivity gains.

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Practical migration playbook for enterprises​

The next 60–120 days will determine cost exposure and operational risk for many organizations. A practical plan includes both strategic choices and concrete tactical steps.

• Inventory and classify (0–14 days)
• Build a verified inventory of all Windows endpoints, including BIOS/factory IDs, firmware, TPM/secure‑boot status, and application dependencies.
• Tag devices by upgradeability: in‑place capable, hardware‑upgrade candidate (RAM/SSD/TPM), or replace. Use existing management tools or endpoint telemetry sources to accelerate this work.
• Prioritize by risk and value (0–21 days)
• Identify high‑risk or high‑value devices (servers and regulatory control points, front‑line manufacturing or clinical systems). For those, migration plans must include test matrices and vendor engagement.
• Pilot rigorously (21–45 days)
• Run multi‑model pilot lifts with representative users and applications. Measure key metrics: crash rate, hard resets, application crash frequency, boot/logon times and employee sentiment.
• Decide on ESU vs migration for residual fleet (30–60 days)
• Use vendor pricing, cloud entitlements, and your risk tolerance to grid which devices will get ESU subscriptions and which will be migrated/replaced. Factor in Year‑Two and Year‑Three ESU escalation if you plan to buy multi‑year coverage.
• Operationalize driver and firmware pipelines (30–90 days)
• Establish OEM driver feeds and create automated driver/firmware deployment campaigns. Many migration issues stem from driver mismatch and BIOS/firmware lag.
• Communicate and train (ongoing)
• Treat migration as an employee experience program: explain benefits, provide quick reference guides, and ensure helpdesk staffing is scaled for the migration wave.

This sequence reduces the risk of rushed, unstable upgrades and limits the number of devices that default to ESU coverage.

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Alternatives and mitigations beyond ESU​

• Windows 365 / Cloud PCs: For some use cases it is more cost‑effective to migrate workloads to cloud‑hosted Windows 10/11 images that are ESU‑exempt. This is particularly attractive for knowledge worker pools with consistent network profiles. Microsoft explicitly includes certain cloud Windows 10 VMs in free ESU coverage. (learn.microsoft.com)
• Linux migration for specific workloads: Where Windows‑only legacy apps are not required, Linux desktop replacements (with application compatibility layers and Thin Client models) are viable and lower long‑term licensing costs—but require an appetite for change management and support retraining.
• Mixed estate and targeted ESU: Many organizations will only need ESU for a small, well‑defined set of legacy systems that are costly to migrate. Use ESU as a surgical bridge, not a blanket policy.
• Modern management discounts: Microsoft has published incentives and discounts for customers who use cloud update tools like Intune or Windows Autopatch; those programs can reduce ESU pricing and streamline remediation. (theverge.com, learn.microsoft.com)

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Security and compliance risk: a non‑trivial tail risk​

Extending support with ESU preserves critical and important security updates, but ESUs exclude new features and many non‑security fixes and don’t substitute for ongoing vendor technical support in the same way a current‑release platform does. Relying heavily on ESUs can create a multi‑year technical debt trap: organizations effectively pay escalating fees, continue to run legacy code, and defer architecture changes—while attackers increasingly scan for legacy‑only exposures.
Regulated industries must also consider compliance implications. Some compliance frameworks view running unsupported software as an unacceptable control gap; others permit compensating controls if security updates continue and detection/response capabilities are demonstrably mature. The compliance decision is therefore organizational and legal, not merely technical. (learn.microsoft.com)

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What to tell the board: three paragraphs of clarity​

• Fiscal exposure is real but variable: a headline $7.3B figure is a directional aggregation that signals global scale; your local exposure depends on device counts, cloud entitlements and negotiated discounts.
• ESU is a bridge, not a fix: Year‑One ESU buys time. Year‑Two and Year‑Three costs escalate quickly, making multi‑year ESU a potentially expensive long‑term strategy.
• Execution matters: migration outages and user friction, not OS features, will determine whether upgrades succeed. Invest in pilot testing, driver pipelines and employee experience measurement to avoid productivity loss that can dwarf licensing costs. (itpro.com, learn.microsoft.com)

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Strengths and risks of the current landscape​

Strengths:

• Microsoft’s ESU program provides a pragmatic short‑term option that is priced transparently for volume customers and made available to consumers for the first time.
• Cloud entitlements and Windows 365 introduce migration pathways that can eliminate ESU spend for workloads moved into managed cloud environments.
• Tooling vendors (including Nexthink) have matured readiness and post‑migration telemetry, enabling data‑driven migrations that minimize surprise outages. (learn.microsoft.com, docs-v6.nexthink.com)

Risks:

• Publicly circulated aggregate estimates rely on imperfect inputs. Treat headline numbers as planning signals, not invoices.
• Rushed migrations frequently surface driver/firmware incompatibilities and cause operational incidents—organizations that treat migration as a compliance checkbox risk degraded employee productivity.
• ESU’s tiered price escalation incentivizes short‑term fixes; poor governance can leave an organization paying compounding fees as it delays necessary modernization. (itpro.com, learn.microsoft.com)

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Final verdict and actionable checklist​

The decision to pay ESU or migrate is not solely financial: it’s a cross‑functional judgment that mixes procurement, security, device engineering and employee experience. For risk‑averse organizations with large, critical legacy devices, ESU is a defensible bridge—provided there is an end date, governance and a funded migration program. For organizations with manageable application estates and a serious device‑refresh budget, migrating now will almost always be cheaper and more secure over a three‑ to five‑year horizon.
Actionable checklist (to run now):

• Complete verified device inventory and tag upgradeability.
• Run a 30‑to‑60‑device pilot covering the most common hardware models.
• Negotiate ESU terms now if you need coverage, but cap commitments and set migration milestones.
• Create driver and firmware remediation pipelines with OEM tools.
• Evaluate Windows 365/Cloud PC suitability for at least 20% of knowledge workers—sometimes cloud migration is cheaper and faster.
• Communicate clear timelines to business stakeholders and the board; show the expected cost curve for ESU vs migration and include productivity risk estimates.

The October 14, 2025 deadline is less an ending than a governance trigger: it forces organizations to choose a path and fund it. The right path is the one that balances short‑term risk mitigation with a durable modernization of endpoint estate, executed with measurement and a focus on employee experience. (support.microsoft.com, learn.microsoft.com, docs-v6.nexthink.com)

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Conclusion
Enterprises that treat Windows 10 end‑of‑support as a mere licensing problem will find themselves paying repeatedly and living with technical debt. Those that treat it as a program—inventory, pilot, remediate, migrate and measure—will convert a deadline into an improvement in security and employee experience. The $7.3 billion headline is useful as a global stress test, but the local decision depends on device reality, negotiated pricing and the ability to execute a migration that leaves users better off. (itpro.com, learn.microsoft.com)

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Source: theregister.com Enterprises staying on Windows 10 could shell out billions

On October 14, 2025, Microsoft will stop mainstream support for Windows 10 — a deadline that has pushed organizations into a tight strategic choice: upgrade to Windows 11, migrate to alternatives, or pay to keep critical security updates flowing. New modeling from digital employee experience firm Nexthink shows the scale of the decision: using industry market‑share proxies and enterprise telemetry, Nexthink estimates that roughly 121 million enterprise devices could still be running Windows 10 at end‑of‑support, producing a potential first‑year Extended Security Update (ESU) bill in the billions of dollars if organizations choose to buy coverage rather than migrate. This article explains the numbers, unpacks how Microsoft’s ESU program actually works, evaluates the migration trade‑offs (technical, financial and environmental), and lays out practical steps CIOs and IT teams should take before the deadline. (support.microsoft.com, itpro.com)

Background: what ends on October 14, 2025 — and what continues​

Microsoft’s end‑of‑support notice for Windows 10 is definitive: after October 14, 2025, Windows 10 will no longer receive general technical assistance, feature updates or security updates unless the device is enrolled in a paid Extended Security Updates (ESU) program or otherwise eligible for special update channels. Devices will continue to operate, but they will be increasingly vulnerable to newly discovered vulnerabilities and unsupported by official Microsoft troubleshooting. (support.microsoft.com)
For organizations the calendar makes the decision urgent: running a productive, secure estate on an unsupported desktop OS is a material cybersecurity and compliance risk for many sectors. That simple fact is shaping procurement, upgrade projects and budgets globally in the second half of 2025.

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The Nexthink headline: how a $7.3 billion figure was produced — and what it means​

The raw math (explained)​

Nexthink’s public analysis constructs a directional model:

• Start with Microsoft’s published headline: roughly 1.4 billion monthly active Windows devices worldwide.
• Assume about 30% of those are in commercial or public‑sector use, yielding roughly 420 million enterprise Windows endpoints.
• Apply market‑share proxies (StatCounter snapshots and Nexthink telemetry) to estimate how many enterprise devices still run Windows 10 — Nexthink’s mid‑2025 figure was ~181 million, with a projected decline to ~121 million by the October deadline.
• Multiply the headline per‑device ESU list price for Year One ($61 USD) by the estimated remaining Windows 10 population to produce the ~$7.3 billion first‑year number. (itpro.com, theregister.com)

What the $7.3B number actually is​

That $7.3 billion is an illustrative, headline‑grabbing aggregate built from a sequence of assumptions — useful as a scale indicator, not as an itemized invoice. The real cost any organisation faces will depend on its device inventory, existing licensing agreements, cloud adoption, the degree to which devices are already enrolled in management services, and its migration timeline. Nexthink’s estimate is a directional, industry‑level illustration of why the end‑of‑support date merits board‑level attention. (itpro.com)

Caveats and sensitivity​

• The enterprise device count is a proxy: Microsoft does not publish a device‑by‑OS breakdown for commercial fleets. Nexthink uses telemetry, StatCounter market‑share snapshots, and decline‑rate projections to derive the 121M figure. Those inputs are reasonable but not definitive. Treat the headline as a planning signal, not a financial commitment letter. (theregister.com)
• Currency conversions matter: converting a $7.3B USD figure into euros or other currencies depends on the exchange rate used. Exchange rates in September 2025 have averaged around €0.86 per USD, which materially alters euro totals depending on the timestamp used. Always run the conversion at your treasury’s spot rate for budgeting. (wise.com)

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How Microsoft’s Windows 10 ESU program actually works (pricing, activation and caveats)​

Three technical activation paths — and the headline prices​

Microsoft has defined three routes to receive Extended Security Updates for Windows 10 in the commercial context:

• Traditional “5‑by‑5” activation (on‑premises key management): a per‑device ESU license applied by volume activation tools. This sets the Year One list price at $61 USD per device. Subsequent years have higher list prices and the program runs for up to three years. (techcommunity.microsoft.com)
• Cloud activation via management services (Intune/Windows Autopatch): organizations using Microsoft cloud update management can deploy ESU via cloud activation with a discounted price — roughly a ~25% reduction compared with list. This both reduces unit cost and simplifies activation. (techcommunity.microsoft.com)
• Inclusion via Windows 365 (Cloud PC): devices accessing Windows 11 Cloud PCs through Windows 365 — and certain virtual machine scenarios — are entitled to ESU at no additional cost as part of Windows 365, subject to the subscription terms and a one‑year commitment in some offerings. This effectively means that cloud PC adoption can absorb ESU risk for eligible workloads. (blogs.windows.com, techcommunity.microsoft.com)

For consumers, Microsoft announced easier enrollment options (one‑year consumer ESU coverage with options including Windows Backup or Microsoft Rewards), but the corporate ESU model and its escalating prices are the primary driver of enterprise cost modeling. (blogs.windows.com)

Year‑by‑year price escalation​

Microsoft’s ESU program is intentionally designed to encourage migration by making continued coverage progressively more expensive. Public pricing guidance and market coverage give the following Year 1 / Year 2 / Year 3 list sequence used by industry analysts:

• Year 1: $61 USD per device
• Year 2: $122 USD per device
• Year 3: $244 USD per device

That doubling effect compounds the financial case to plan and execute migration rather than rely on ESU as a long‑term strategy. Organisations that can compress migrations into a one‑ or two‑year window will materially reduce cumulative spending. (itgoat.com, techcommunity.microsoft.com)

Practical levers that materially change the bill​

• Use Intune or Windows Autopatch for cloud activation to gain discounts and orchestration benefits.
• Consolidate devices under Microsoft 365 or Windows 365 where appropriate — Windows 365 Cloud PCs may absorb ESU coverage for eligible workloads.
• Negotiate with cloud service provider partners or volume licensing channels — enterprise agreements and CSPs often have tailored commercial terms that reduce per‑device burden.

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Migration reality check: Windows 11 is the Microsoft‑recommended path — but it has operational friction​

Stability signals and what they mean​

Nexthink’s telemetry and analyst commentary indicate that in some measurement pools Windows 11 rollouts have shown higher crash and hard‑reset rates compared with Windows 10 early in deployments. Nexthink and independent commentators attribute much of this to hardware and driver compatibility, deployment hygiene and the inevitable teething problems of large in‑place upgrades, rather than an inherent, unsolvable flaw in Windows 11 itself. That operational instability creates a migration risk premium that must be modeled into any rollout schedule. (techradar.com, docs-v6.nexthink.com)

Hardware constraints and the TPM / CPU filter​

Windows 11’s minimum hardware requirements (including TPM 2.0 and a list of supported CPUs) mean that a notable subset of functional Windows 10 devices cannot be upgraded in place without component upgrades or outright replacement. That reality leads to three common enterprise choices:

• Upgrade firmware/drivers and perform in‑place upgrades where feasible.
• Replace older devices with new Windows 11‑capable hardware.
• Re‑image or re‑architect the desktop strategy (VDI/Cloud PC, Linux, thin clients) to avoid immediate mass hardware refreshes.

Each option carries procurement, logistics and e‑waste implications that must be priced into the migration business case. (docs-v6.nexthink.com)

Application compatibility is often the dominant cost​

In practice, application compatibility testing, remediation (containerization, updates, replacements), and user acceptance testing are frequently the largest line items in migration budgets — often larger than device replacement costs. A careful pilot, phased rollout and a robust remediation pipeline reduce organizational risk but extend timelines and project cost. Nexthink’s migration‑pilot tooling emphasizes capturing pre‑migration stability, application breakage and remediation sequencing for this reason. (docs-v6.nexthink.com)

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Alternatives to upgrading: Linux, virtualization and segmentation​

• Linux desktop migration: For organizations where Windows‑only applications are limited, a partial migration to Linux can avoid hardware refreshes and ESU fees entirely. This path requires an application‑by‑application analysis, acceptable user experience tradeoffs, and desktop support capability. It is a strategic alternative for specific use cases — not a blanket solution for most knowledge worker fleets.
• Virtualization and VDI: Replatforming legacy applications into virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) or Windows 365 Cloud PCs lets organizations move the support boundary into managed cloud images that run on supported OS versions. This can shelter legacy endpoints but introduces recurring cloud costs and network dependency tradeoffs.
• Segmentation and isolation: For highly regulated or industrial environments where migration is technically hard, isolating unsupported Windows 10 systems, applying compensating controls, and constraining internet exposure can be a stop‑gap. These are mitigation tactics, not long‑term solutions.

Each alternative reduces direct ESU exposure but adds operational complexity, cost and change in other vectors — evaluate them with a total cost of ownership (TCO) mindset.

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Financial modeling: realistic scenarios and conversion sensitivity​

To illustrate how enterprise cost plays out, consider three stylized scenarios for a hypothetical global organization with 100,000 Windows endpoints:

• Immediate migration to Windows 11 (50% can upgrade in place, 50% require hardware refresh): front‑loaded capital expenditure for 50,000 device replacements plus project costs for application remediation and pilot runbooks.
• One‑year ESU buy‑time: Purchase Year‑One ESU coverage at $61 per device for all 100,000 devices, then migrate over 12 months.
• Hybrid: 30% enrolled via Windows 365 Cloud PCs (no ESU cost for those), 50% migrate during Year 1, and 20% are kept on Year‑one ESU coverage.

Example arithmetic (illustrative only):

• One‑year ESU for 100,000 devices at $61 = $6.1M (USD).
• Two‑year ESU for 100,000 devices (Year 1 + Year 2 = $61 + $122) = $18.3M (USD) before discounts.
• Cloud activation discount (~25%) or Windows 365 inclusion can reduce the above figures materially.

For enterprise planners, the right framing is a multi‑year cashflow model: ESU is an option to buy time at a known recurring cost that escalates annually; migration compresses cost but requires capital and operational investment. Model both the direct and indirect costs (downtime, productivity, helpdesk load) to make the optimal trade. (techcommunity.microsoft.com, itgoat.com)
Currency note: converting USD totals to euros is exchange‑rate sensitive. Mid‑September 2025 mid‑market rates were roughly €0.86 per USD, meaning a $7.3B USD headline converts to approximately €6.3B when using contemporaneous mid‑market rates; different conversion timestamps will change the euro figure materially. Organisations should use the treasury spot rate or locked hedges when preparing budgets. (wise.com)

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Operational playbook: what IT teams should do next (concrete steps)​

• Inventory and baseline (0–2 weeks)
• Produce a complete, reconciled device inventory with OS version, hardware model, firmware version, TPM presence and application list.
• Tag devices by migration eligibility: “in‑place upgrade”, “upgradeable with component swap”, “replace”, “segmentation required”.
• Prioritize by risk and value (2–4 weeks)
• Rank devices by sensitivity, compliance footprint and user criticality.
• Create migration waves: pilots (5–10%), fast lanes (kiosks, knowledge workers), and slow lanes (specialized devices).
• Run compatibility pilots (4–8 weeks)
• Execute in‑place Windows 11 pilots with a variety of hardware models and application stacks.
• Measure crash/hard‑reset rates, app breakage, and user‑experience metrics; iterate remediation steps. Use telemetry and DEX tooling for objective signals. (docs-v6.nexthink.com)
• Decide on ESU coverage and activation route (concurrently)
• For devices that cannot be migrated before Oct 14, 2025, evaluate ESU at the device level: purchase per‑device ESU for the minimal number needed and plan renewal only if migration slips.
• If you already use Intune or Windows Autopatch, plan cloud activation to capture the ~25% discount and simplify lifecycle management. (techcommunity.microsoft.com)
• Execution and recovery (3–12 months)
• Phase upgrades, use automated imaging where possible, and contain rollback plans.
• For replaced devices, ensure secure off‑boarding, data migration, and responsible recycling to minimize e‑waste.
• Post‑migration validation and decommissioning
• Deactivate ESU where no longer needed, reconcile license inventories, and retire legacy images.

This playbook reduces the chance of being forced into large, last‑minute ESU purchases and spreads cost predictably.

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Broader risks and non‑financial costs​

• Security and compliance: Unsupported OS instances are attractive targets for attackers. For regulated industries, continuing to run out‑of‑support clients may violate standards or raise auditor concerns.
• Productivity and support: Heterogeneous estates (mix of Windows 10, Windows 11, Cloud PCs and Linux) increase helpdesk complexity and end‑user friction unless tightly managed through DEX tooling and clear support SLAs.
• Environmental impact: The hardware requirements for Windows 11 have sparked public debate about planned obsolescence and e‑waste. Where practical, prefer component upgrades or virtualization to outright disposal. Community repair and trade‑in programs can mitigate the device‑replacement environmental footprint.
• Vendor lock‑in and future costs: Buying ESU is a tactical choice — using cloud activation and Windows 365 to absorb updates introduces longer‑term platform reliance that must be weighed against multi‑cloud or open‑source alternatives.

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Strategic takeaways — what boards and CIOs should care about now​

• The end of Windows 10 support is not just a technical deadline; it is a multi‑year operational and financial program that should be treated as a strategic change program with explicit funding and governance.
• ESU is a valid and often sensible short‑term tool to buy time, but it is not a long‑term substitute for migration. The annual price doubling makes prolonged reliance costly.
• Migration risk is real: Windows 11 adoption in large fleets has revealed compatibility and stability friction that must be actively managed through pilots, driver/firmware remediation and phased rollouts.
• Tactical levers exist to reduce cost and risk: cloud activation discounts via Intune/Windows Autopatch, Windows 365 inclusion, and targeted use of virtualization can materially lower the ESU bill or remove it for portions of the estate.
• Quantify and model both direct costs (ESU, device refresh) and indirect costs (downtime, helpdesk, compliance exposure) — the correct decision will almost always be organization‑specific.

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Final verdict: avoid panic; plan deliberately​

The headlines about “billions” are accurate in the sense that the aggregate potential spend to keep Windows 10 alive is very large — but that headline is a directional alarm, not an exact invoice. Organizations with disciplined inventory, clear prioritization and a migration‑first mindset can avoid paying the full price of prolonged ESU coverage and can mitigate the operational instability that sometimes accompanies OS upgrades. For those who cannot migrate immediately, ESU — purchased selectively and deployed via cloud activation where possible — is an essential tactical tool to preserve security while migration work proceeds. (itpro.com, techcommunity.microsoft.com)
Plan now, pilot carefully, and price both migration and ESU as components of the same modernization program. The October 14, 2025 deadline is less a cliff than a milestone in a multi‑year migration journey; treat it as such and budget accordingly. (support.microsoft.com, wise.com)

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Source: heise online 6.7 billion euros: End of Windows 10 as a money printing machine for Microsoft

The coming October deadline changes the calculus for every IT leader: staying on Windows 10 beyond its end-of-support date will be expensive, risky, and—unless tightly scoped—likely more costly than a focused migration to Windows 11 or a modern cloud-based desktop strategy. Recent analysis from Nexthink, picked up widely by the trade, estimates a Year‑One bill of roughly $7.3 billion if large swathes of the commercial estate buy Extended Security Updates (ESU) instead of migrating. That figure is based on per‑device ESU list pricing and market-share and device‑count assumptions; the headline is real, but the right decision for any single organisation remains a nuanced cost‑risk trade‑off. (itpro.com) (theregister.com)

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Background / Overview​

Microsoft has set a fixed end‑of‑support date for mainstream Windows 10: 14 October 2025. After that date, most Windows 10 editions stop receiving routine feature updates, quality fixes and security patches unless the device is enrolled in Microsoft’s Extended Security Updates (ESU) program or is covered by specific cloud-hosted options. Microsoft’s documentation and lifecycle guidance make this explicit and list the technical and commercial options for organisations that need breathing room. (support.microsoft.com)
The ESU program for Windows 10 is positioned as a temporary bridge — not a long‑term maintenance model. For commercial customers, Microsoft’s published list pricing for ESU establishes a clear escalation: $61 per device in Year One, then $122 in Year Two, and $244 in Year Three, doubling each year to incentivise migration. There are also cloud‑activation options and special education consumer/education pricing, and some cloud scenarios (Windows 365 / Azure Virtual Desktop) receive ESU at no additional cost. These points are documented by Microsoft and Microsoft’s Windows IT Pro communications. (techcommunity.microsoft.com, learn.microsoft.com)
Nexthink’s model — summarised in press coverage and the Computer Weekly story you supplied — combines Microsoft’s broad device counts, StatCounter market‑share snapshots and Nexthink’s own telemetry to estimate how many enterprise endpoints will still be on Windows 10 at the deadline and the resulting ESU exposure at the Year‑One price point. The resulting headline — that sticking with Windows 10 “could cost” organisations collectively around $7.3 billion — is a macro alarm bell. It is accurate as an arithmetic product of those inputs, but it depends on multiple assumptions that vary by region, sector and customer. (itpro.com)

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What Nexthink actually calculated (and what to watch for)​

Nexthink’s public‑facing calculation follows a short chain of assumptions:

• Microsoft public commentary and market trackers point to roughly 1.4 billion monthly active Windows devices globally (starting point).
• Nexthink assumes about 30% of those devices are in commercial or public‑sector use — roughly 420 million enterprise devices.
• Using StatCounter‑style market‑share snapshots and Nexthink telemetry, it estimated 181 million of those enterprise devices were still running Windows 10 at a mid‑2025 snapshot, and projected a decline to about 121 million Windows 10 devices by the 14 October cut‑off.
• Multiply 121 million devices × $61 (Year‑One ESU list price) = ~$7.3 billion for the first year of ESU coverage. (theregister.com)

This is a simple, transparent model — useful for communicating scale — but it is not a per‑organisation quote. The estimate is sensitive to at least three inputs: the underlying device headcount Microsoft uses (publicly stated but not broken down by edition), the percentage of devices in commercial estates, and the market‑share snapshot (StatCounter and similar trackers show month‑to‑month variation). Because of that sensitivity, different trackers and different cut‑over assumptions will change the headline materially. StatCounter’s public charts show Windows 10 and Windows 11 market shares moving month to month; depending on the month quoted, Win10 and Win11 can flip between mid‑40s and low‑50s percentages, which affects absolute device counts. (gs.statcounter.com, pcworld.com)
Caveat: Nexthink’s number is a credible industry‑level warning that collective ESU exposure is very large. It is not a fixed bill for any single company. IT leaders should treat the number as a sector‑level stress test, not a procurement invoice.

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What ESU buys — and what it does not​

Understanding the features and limits of ESU is essential before signing anything. The key points are:

• What ESU covers
• Critical and important security updates for eligible Windows 10 releases (primarily 22H2).
• Monthly security patches for enrolled devices to reduce immediate exploit risk after EOL. (learn.microsoft.com)
• What ESU does not cover
• New feature updates, performance/quality updates, or general technical support beyond activation assistance.
• Compatibility fixes, driver updates or back‑ported functionality that go beyond the security patch set.
• A permanent replacement for a migration program — Microsoft frames ESU as a temporary bridge. (support.microsoft.com, techcommunity.microsoft.com)
• Activation options and discounts
• Traditional 5‑by‑5 activation keys (per‑device).
• Cloud‑activation discounts (roughly ~25% in some Microsoft communications) for customers who use Intune/Windows Autopatch.
• ESU entitlement included in some Windows 365 and Azure Virtual Desktop configurations. (techcommunity.microsoft.com)
• Consumer and education pricing differences
• Education customers typically receive highly discounted ESU pricing ($1 / $2 / $4 over three years in Microsoft’s education guidance).
• Microsoft also introduced a consumer ESU option (one year) at a lower price point with specific enrolment rules; Microsoft has also offered limited free‑enrolment pathways tied to cloud backup/account behaviours in some announcements. These non‑commercial channels are different from the enterprise commercial pricing and eligibility rules. (microsoft.com, support.microsoft.com)

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The numbers — a practical, granular view for IT teams​

The Nexthink $7.3bn computation is useful as context. For operational planning, organisations need granular breakdowns. Here are practical ways to model ESU vs migration economics:

• Example organisational model (rounded):
• Fleet size: 100,000 devices remaining on Windows 10 at Oct 14, 2025.
• ESU Year‑One cost: 100,000 × $61 = $6.1M.
• ESU full three‑year cumulative price (if continued): $61 + $122 + $244 = $427 per device → $42.7M for 100k devices (cumulative over three years, note ESUs are cumulative if bought late).
• Hardware refresh alternative: New device + deployment amortised: e.g., $900 per device × 100,000 = $90M (one‑off capex), which could be cheaper or costlier depending on amortisation, productivity gains and vendor deals.
• Key takeaways from the numbers:
• For small numbers of immovable legacy devices, ESU Year‑One is relatively inexpensive compared with replacement capex or complex retooling.
• For large estates, multiple years of ESU quickly compound and can exceed the cost of staged hardware refreshes, application modernisation and migration services.
• If you enter ESU in Year Two or Year Three, Microsoft’s cumulative purchase model often requires paying prior years retroactively, which materially increases the cost for late entrants. (techcommunity.microsoft.com)

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Technical and operational risks of staying on Windows 10​

Paying for ESU reduces the immediate patching risk, but it does not remove operational and strategic risks:

• Security posture erosion over time. Supported security patches close known attack vectors, but ESU only covers critical/important patches. As vendors stop testing or certifying new endpoint security controls against Windows 10, the platform’s security surface grows riskier. Threat actors rapidly weaponise unsupported platforms. (support.microsoft.com)
• Application and driver compatibility. Over time, independent software vendors and peripheral manufacturers increasingly test and optimise for the current mainstream OS. Older drivers and LOB apps on Windows 10 risk loss of support from vendors, resulting in compatibility holes and patching friction.
• Compliance and audit exposure. Regulated industries (finance, healthcare, government) may face audit and compliance risks from running unsupported OS versions, even if patched via ESU. Regulatory frameworks often expect vendor‑supported platforms.
• Operational complexity and user experience. Partial migrations produce mixed end‑user experiences; Nexthink’s DEX telemetry finds higher crash and hard reset rates in early Windows 11 deployments in some datasets, but this can often be traced back to hardware, driver, or deployment‑process mismatches rather than the OS itself. Bad pilots, rushed rollouts, and poor remediation cause higher help‑desk load and productivity loss. Proper telemetry and pilot discipline reduce these risks.
• Supply chain and vendor capacity constraints. A simultaneous rush by many large organisations to refresh hardware or contract migration services can create procurement lead times, pricing pressure and resourcing bottlenecks — increasing total migration costs and schedule risk.

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A practical migration playbook: how to make the move quickly and safely​

For IT teams that have to decide between short‑term ESU purchases and immediate migration, the following measured approach balances risk, cost and employee experience.

1. Rapid inventory and telemetry (week 0–2)​

• Build an accurate device inventory: OS version, hardware compatibility (TPM, Secure Boot), application inventory, critical peripherals.
• Use telemetry (DEX and endpoint telemetry) to identify high‑risk users, high‑value devices and mission‑critical apps. This will let you prioritise who migrates first. You cannot manage what you cannot measure.

2. Prioritise by risk and business impact (week 2–4)​

• Define tiers:
  1.) Mission‑critical systems that cannot be touched (consider ESU for a small subset).
  2.) High‑value knowledge workers (prioritise fast migration).
  3.) Peripheral‑sensitive or legacy hardware (consider virtualization/cloud or targeted remediation).
• Align procurement windows with quarterly budgets and hardware refresh cycles.

3. Pilot, validate, repeat (month 1–3)​

• Run small, representative pilots that mirror the diversity of employee roles and hardware profiles.
• Validate driver stacks, VPNs, videoconferencing, and line‑of‑business apps.
• Refine imaging, driver packs, and support runbooks. Nexthink and DEX tools are specifically aimed at detecting and pre‑empting user impact during these pilots.

4. Use hybrid techniques to reduce ESU scope (month 2–9)​

• Offload legacy workloads to virtual desktops, Windows 365 Cloud PCs or Azure Virtual Desktop; these can bypass per‑device ESU in many scenarios.
• Retire or contain isolated OT or industrial devices via network segmentation and compensating controls.
• For particularly stubborn line‑of‑business applications, investigate containerisation, app remodelling or vendor upgrades.

5. Negotiate supplier deals and staged procurement (ongoing)​

• Negotiate volume discounts, trade‑in credits, warranty and depot support with OEMs to reduce TCO.
• Where ESU is unavoidable, target it narrowly for the smallest possible set of devices and buy Year‑One only as a bridge. Microsoft offers cloud‑activation discounts and special education pricing; factor these into your procurement strategy. (techcommunity.microsoft.com, microsoft.com)

6. Measure post‑migration experience​

• Use DEX metrics and SLA figures to measure user experience before and after migration; treat migration as a digital experience improvement rather than a pure compliance exercise. Nexthink has emphasised that migrations succeed when they measurably improve productivity and reliability.

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Financial and procurement considerations — beyond the headline​

The Nexthink headline compresses complexity into a single number. Procurement and finance teams need a richer set of comparisons to choose wisely:

• Per‑device ESU vs amortised hardware refresh — compare three‑year ESU cumulative cost against amortised replacement cost and productivity gains. For many fleets, a well‑timed refresh aligned with Windows 11 upgrades will produce a lower three‑year TCO than buying ESU repeatedly.
• Discount channels — Microsoft’s channel and cloud‑activation discounts (and Windows 365 inclusion cases) materially alter per‑device economics for customers already committed to Microsoft cloud services. Evaluate those routes before buying large ESU volumes at list price. (techcommunity.microsoft.com, redmondmag.com)
• Hidden costs — include help‑desk overhead, lost productivity from migration mishaps, compliance penalties and potential post‑breach remediation costs in your model. An unsupported OS that is later breached can produce very large operational and reputational costs.
• Environmental and sustainability costs — aggressive replacement programmes increase e‑waste. Where replacement is necessary, negotiate certified recycling and asset‑disposition programmes to reduce environmental impact and potentially recoup value.

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Strengths and weaknesses of the “buy ESU” strategy​

Strengths​

• Rapid risk reduction for a narrow set of devices that cannot be migrated quickly.
• Operational breathing room to plan complex migrations without forcing rushed, error‑prone rollouts.
• Predictable short‑term cost if purchased early for a well scoped estate. (techcommunity.microsoft.com)

Weaknesses / Risks​

• High cumulative cost if used broadly over multiple years; Microsoft’s doubling pricing structure is deliberately punitive for indefinite delay.
• Limited coverage — ESU only covers critical security updates, not compatibility or feature fixes.
• Compliance blind spots — some regulatory frameworks and third‑party vendors may treat an ESU‑protected installation differently from a fully supported OS.
• Opportunity cost — prolonged postponement delays the productivity, security and manageability gains that come with modern hardware and Windows 11 features (e.g., security enclaves, virtualization‑based security features).

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Where claims are solid — and where to be cautious​

• Solid, verifiable facts:
• Windows 10 end of support date: 14 October 2025. (support.microsoft.com)
• Microsoft ESU pricing structure (commercial): Year‑One list price $61, doubling each year thereafter. Microsoft published this guidance and the Windows IT Pro communications explain activation options and discounts. (techcommunity.microsoft.com)
• Nexthink’s public estimate and the arithmetic described above have been widely reported by reputable outlets (ITPro, TechRadar, The Register). The analysis is transparent in its assumptions and intended as a macro‑scale alarm. (itpro.com, techradar.com)
• Claims requiring caution:
• Exact device headcounts for Windows 10 in enterprise estates are not public and differ by telemetry source. Nexthink’s model uses reasonable proxies and telemetry samples, but absolute device counts (e.g., “121 million devices will require ESU”) depend on snapshot timing and sampling methodology. Treat these numbers as estimates, not precise inventories for procurement.
• Reported Windows 11 stability metrics (e.g., crash/hard‑reset comparisons) come from vendor telemetry and can vary by fleet, driver sets and OEM configurations; they should inform pilot design but not be used to categorically reject migration.

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Executive checklist (actionable items for the next 30–90 days)​

• Convene a cross‑functional migration steering group (CIO, CISO, Head of Desktop, Procurement, App Owners).
• Run a three‑week discovery sprint: inventory, app compatibility scan, device readiness (TPM/Secure Boot).
• If needed, buy ESU only for the smallest, mission‑critical cohort as a one‑year bridge — not as a default plan for the whole estate. Negotiate cloud‑activation discounts if you’re Intune/Windows Autopatch customers. (techcommunity.microsoft.com)
• Launch representative pilots with strong telemetry and rollback plans; iterate on driver packs and imaging automation.
• Where hardware is incompatible or apps cannot be migrated, prioritise virtualization or Windows 365 Cloud PCs to reduce per‑device ESU exposure.
• Track migration KPIs: time‑to‑upgrade, help‑desk tickets per 1,000 users, DEX health scores and post‑migration crash rates.

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Final analysis and conclusion​

Nexthink’s headline — that sticking with Windows 10 could be costly — is a necessary alarm for boards and IT leaders. The arithmetic that produces a $7.3 billion Year‑One figure is straightforward and credible at scale: multiply plausible per‑device ESU pricing by plausible device counts and the result is large. But for individual organisations the choice is not binary; it is a portfolio decision across devices, users and applications.
The pragmatic posture for IT leaders is clear:

• Treat ESU as a short‑term, targeted insurance policy for truly immovable workloads — not a long‑term business model.
• Prioritise inventory, telemetry and a phased migration program that treats the transition as a digital experience improvement rather than a forced compliance sprint.
• Exploit cloud activation and Windows 365/AVD paths to reduce exposure where possible, and negotiate procurement and warranty deals to lower TCO for necessary hardware refreshes. (techcommunity.microsoft.com, learn.microsoft.com)

The calendar is fixed. The decision window is now. Large headline numbers drive attention, but the winning organisations will be those that translate those headlines into disciplined, measurable programs: immediate inventorying, narrow risk‑scoped ESU purchases when needed, and aggressive but careful migration plans that safeguard productivity while removing unsupported software from the attack surface. The path forward is neither simple nor painless — but it is eminently manageable with accurate data, a prioritised plan and diligent execution. (itpro.com)

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Source: Computer Weekly Sticking with Windows 10 could be costly | Microscope