Nexthink’s warning that “sticking with Windows 10 could cost businesses billions” captured headlines for a reason: a simple arithmetic model — 121 million Windows 10 PCs multiplied by an enterprise Extended Security Update (ESU) list price of $61 per device — produces a first‑year bill in the neighborhood of $7.3 billion. That figure, repeated across industry press, is a useful headline but not the whole story. Behind it sit real choices for IT leaders: pay for time-limited security coverage, accelerate complex OS migrations that strain people and apps, or adopt containment strategies that create new operational burdens. This feature drills into the numbers, verifies the technical claims, explains the trade‑offs, and lays out pragmatic, prioritized options for IT teams that must choose between short‑term fixes and long‑term modernization.
Microsoft will end mainstream support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025. After that date, devices not covered by Extended Security Updates (ESU) stop receiving quality/security fixes or official technical support from Microsoft. That reality has pushed organizations into three broad responses: (a) move devices to Windows 11, (b) buy ESU coverage to buy time, or (c) isolate and accept the increased risk of an unsupported OS. The ESU program’s announced pricing and eligibility rules — $61 per device for Year One for commercial customers, doubling in each subsequent year, while consumer ESU is a one‑year option priced at $30 — have turned migration timing into a financial calculation as well as an engineering one.
StatCounter’s monthly snapshot for August 2025 shows Windows 11 at roughly 49% and Windows 10 at roughly 45.6% of desktop Windows installs worldwide — meaning a large, active population of Windows 10 endpoints remains in production. Those devices are the basis for population estimates used in cost models. But monthly market‑share snapshots swing with traffic patterns and sampling; they're a useful signal, not a precise headcount.
Nexthink — a digital employee experience (DEX) analytics vendor — used device population estimates and enterprise ESU pricing to produce the headline dollar figure. It also reported adoption trends (a decline in Windows 10 installs) and operational signals suggesting Windows 11 deployments currently show higher crash and hard‑reset rates in some measurement sets. Those operational observations get to the heart of IT decision making: the risk of running an unsupported OS versus the near‑term instability and deployment burden of a major OS migration.
Key operational realities to plan for:
Independent coverage and community reports corroborate real instability events tied to specific Windows 11 feature updates (examples include reports of app crashes, device‑specific driver issues, USB problems after patches, and game/anti‑cheat incompatibilities). These are patch‑ and driver‑specific, not universal condemnation of Windows 11, but they do mean migrations must be carefully staged and tested. Community and trade publications documented problems with 24H2 updates and other patches during 2024–2025. (windowscentral.com, reddit.com)
Bottom line: Windows 11 migration risk is real — so is the security risk of delaying — and the right answer is rarely “do nothing.”
The organizations that will succeed are those that treat migration as a strategic program: start with accurate inventory, apply telemetry to prioritize risk, use pilots to reduce unknowns, and choose a mixture of upgrade, virtualization, and short‑term ESU where it makes financial and operational sense. That balanced approach turns headline fear into a practical roadmap.
Conclusion
The Nexthink‑informed headline that “sticking with Windows 10 could cost businesses billions” is true as a macro economic signal: a large Windows 10 population multiplied by ESU list pricing yields multi‑billion dollar exposure. But the right choice is not binary. The most defensible posture for IT leaders is pragmatic: immediately inventory and categorize, buy targeted breathing room only where required, pilot and automate migration for the high‑impact workloads, and favor containment plus modernization over indefinite reliance on paid legacy support. In short, the billion‑dollar figure is a call to action — not a mandate to pay it.
Source: TechRadar Sticking with Windows 10 could cost business billions - so is it really worth it?
Background: why the question matters now
Microsoft will end mainstream support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025. After that date, devices not covered by Extended Security Updates (ESU) stop receiving quality/security fixes or official technical support from Microsoft. That reality has pushed organizations into three broad responses: (a) move devices to Windows 11, (b) buy ESU coverage to buy time, or (c) isolate and accept the increased risk of an unsupported OS. The ESU program’s announced pricing and eligibility rules — $61 per device for Year One for commercial customers, doubling in each subsequent year, while consumer ESU is a one‑year option priced at $30 — have turned migration timing into a financial calculation as well as an engineering one. StatCounter’s monthly snapshot for August 2025 shows Windows 11 at roughly 49% and Windows 10 at roughly 45.6% of desktop Windows installs worldwide — meaning a large, active population of Windows 10 endpoints remains in production. Those devices are the basis for population estimates used in cost models. But monthly market‑share snapshots swing with traffic patterns and sampling; they're a useful signal, not a precise headcount.
Nexthink — a digital employee experience (DEX) analytics vendor — used device population estimates and enterprise ESU pricing to produce the headline dollar figure. It also reported adoption trends (a decline in Windows 10 installs) and operational signals suggesting Windows 11 deployments currently show higher crash and hard‑reset rates in some measurement sets. Those operational observations get to the heart of IT decision making: the risk of running an unsupported OS versus the near‑term instability and deployment burden of a major OS migration.
The math behind the $7.3 billion headline — and what it actually means
How Nexthink’s figure is built
- Working population: 121 million Windows 10 PCs estimated to still be in use (figure cited in press coverage).
- ESU Year One list price (commercial): $61 per device.
- Simple multiplication: 121,000,000 × $61 = $7,381,000,000 (≈ $7.38 billion). Tech publications round this to a $7.3 billion first‑year cost.
Important clarifications and caveats
- That number covers only the first year of ESU list pricing for commercial devices. Microsoft’s ESU pricing doubles each year for Year Two and Year Three, and ESUs are cumulative (if you join late you must pay prior years), so multi‑year totals are materially larger. Microsoft’s documentation details this structure and the Year‑One rate.
- The $61 figure is a list or published price for volume licensing; negotiated enterprise contracts, bundled cloud entitlements, or customers running Windows 10 in eligible cloud VMs may pay less or receive ESU coverage at no additional cost. Microsoft exempts Windows 10 VMs running in Windows 365, Azure Virtual Desktop and certain other Azure services from additional ESU charges.
- Nexthink’s device count (121 million) is a modeled estimate, not a registry audit. Different data sources (StatCounter, telemetry pools from vendors, or internal inventories) yield different device totals; small shifts in the population assumption change the headline dollars by hundreds of millions. Treat the $7.3B figure as a directional, not forensic, total.
What ESU buys — and what it doesn’t
Microsoft’s ESU provides critical and important security updates for qualifying Windows 10 devices (22H2 required), but it excludes non‑security bug fixes, new features and general technical support. For enterprises, ESU licensing is limited to three years beyond end‑of‑support, and purchases are cumulative. For consumers, Microsoft made a one‑year paid option and a free enrollment path available under specific conditions. These limitations significantly affect the calculus for organizations that need full‑service support, driver fixes, or application compatibility assistance.Key operational realities to plan for:
- ESU does not remove the need for internal testing and remediation of driver or application regressions caused by vendor updates only available during mainstream support periods.
- ESU does not provide the same troubleshooting or remediation assistance as full support contracts; if an ESU update causes a regression, organizations must solve it internally or through paid support channels.
- Eligibility is version‑gated: only Windows 10 version 22H2 qualifies for ESU; devices on earlier builds must be brought up to that baseline before enrolling.
Windows 11 stability and migration pain: real, measurable — but context matters
Nexthink’s DEX telemetry and surveys highlight two competing realities: Windows 11 adoption is climbing, but early migration waves have shown teething problems — higher crash counts and hard resets in measured samples — which inflate IT risk and drive conservative migration schedules. Nexthink’s analysts (including quoted strategist Tim Flower) emphasize that many Windows 11 stability incidents are not the OS itself but hardware, drivers and deployment processes that interact poorly with new code paths.Independent coverage and community reports corroborate real instability events tied to specific Windows 11 feature updates (examples include reports of app crashes, device‑specific driver issues, USB problems after patches, and game/anti‑cheat incompatibilities). These are patch‑ and driver‑specific, not universal condemnation of Windows 11, but they do mean migrations must be carefully staged and tested. Community and trade publications documented problems with 24H2 updates and other patches during 2024–2025. (windowscentral.com, reddit.com)
Bottom line: Windows 11 migration risk is real — so is the security risk of delaying — and the right answer is rarely “do nothing.”
Comparing the real costs: ESU vs. migration vs. containment
IT leaders should look beyond headline licensing totals and compare four cost buckets:- Direct licensing (ESU fees)
- Hardware refresh or retrofit (replacing non‑compatible devices, enabling TPM, firmware updates)
- Migration labor and project costs (testing, packaging, deployment, rollback plans, training)
- Risk & mitigation costs (segmentation, compensating controls, longer incident response times, compliance penalties)
- ESU Year One: $61/device (commercial) for devices that qualify — a quick way to buy a year to plan. But Years Two and Three will cost substantially more if you delay.
- Migration may be free at the OS level for eligible machines, but device replacements and remediation labor can exceed ESU spend for large fleets. Hardware incompatibility remains a major driver of migration capital spend.
- Cloud remediation options (Windows 365, Azure Virtual Desktop) can grant ESU benefits for virtualized Windows 10 workloads at no additional ESU license cost and reduce endpoint hardware constraints, but they introduce ongoing cloud operational spend and licensing complexity.
Strategic options for IT teams (prioritized, practical)
High‑priority (required if you have compliance or mission‑critical systems)
- Inventory and categorize: identify every Windows 10 device, its build (must be 22H2 to be ESU‑eligible), purpose (line‑of‑business app host, lab machine, kiosk), and hardware readiness for Windows 11. Use automated tooling where possible.
- Triage the critical app stack: identify applications that cannot run on Windows 11 and determine remediation paths: vendor updates, containerization, virtualization, or replacement.
- Decide governance: set policy for which workloads are allowed to remain on Windows 10 and define compensating controls (network segmentation, limited user rights, multi‑factor authentication, enhanced EDR).
Mid‑priority (project work to reduce exposure or cost)
- Pilot a gradual migration program: run small, representative pilots with complete telemetry (DEX) so IT can distinguish app vs. OS issues and build reproducible remediation plans.
- Consider cloud migration for legacy or high‑risk endpoints: moving to Windows 365/Azure Virtual Desktop can reduce local hardware constraints and, in many cases, include ESU benefits for Windows 10 images.
- If using ESU, buy Year One only as a bridge and commit to a detailed migration timeline; ESU’s doubling cost structure penalizes multi‑year delay.
Lower‑priority (options for smaller shops or constrained budgets)
- Micro‑patching / third‑party micropatch providers can cover critical vulnerabilities for some workloads, but these are stopgaps and add vendor dependencies. (Examples exist in the market; evaluate security posture and SLAs carefully.)
- For consumer or small business endpoints, Microsoft’s consumer ESU (one year, $30 or free via opted choices) might be cost‑effective for short breathing room — but it’s a one‑shot option and excludes domain‑joined machines.
A step‑by‑step migration checklist (actionable sequence)
- Run a fleet compatibility pass (hardware + drivers + BIOS/UEFI + Secure Boot + TPM) and mark devices: Upgradeable, Retrofitable (firmware updates), Replace.
- Map application criticality and test matrix: identify top 100 apps by users and business impact; validate vendor support on Windows 11.
- Build a pilot group (representative hardware/app mixes) and run staged upgrades with full monitoring and rollback procedures.
- Automate imaging and driver management; validate vendor driver packages before broad deployment.
- Prepare user communications and quick start training focused on UI changes and incident reporting.
- Ramp deployments in waves tied to business units, high‑availability windows, and change windows.
- Retire or isolate Windows 10 devices on a strict schedule; if using ESU, align purchase year to a defined migration phase to avoid unexpected multi‑year costs.
Risk assessment: security, compliance and operational exposure
- Security: unpatched systems are high‑value targets. Without ESU or mitigations, the probability of compromise increases over time as attackers scan for unpatched populations. Regulatory and contractual obligations can make unsupported OS usage a reportable risk or an audit failure.
- Compliance: industries with strict data protection or ICS requirements typically cannot rely on unsupported OSes and may be forced to migrate or adopt additional compensating controls.
- Operational: the longer you run heterogeneous environments (Windows 10 + Windows 11), the higher the helpdesk burden; more variants mean more permutations of failures. Nexthink’s core message — that managing mixed fleets raises IT overhead — is a practical observation for organizations that lack robust automation.
Where the headline figures fall short — and what leaders should watch
- Headline totals treat the fleet as homogeneous; real fleets are not. Many organizations will pay less than the headline per‑device cost due to negotiated volume discounts, or not at all if they are eligible for cloud‑based ESU benefits.
- Tech vendor market‑share snapshots are useful for trend detection but are not an inventory audit; reconcile external market numbers with your internal asset data before making large financial decisions.
- Stability anecdotes and crash rates need context: specific Windows 11 feature updates or OEM driver combos caused many of the high‑visibility problems reported in 2024–2025. Good pilot discipline and vendor coordination reduce rollout risk dramatically.
Executive summary and recommended decision framework
- If your organization runs regulatory or mission‑critical workloads that cannot tolerate increased cyber risk, buy ESU Year One only as a planned bridge while you execute a prioritized migration program. ESU is expensive as a multi‑year strategy because costs double each year.
- If your fleet is largely modern and driver/vendor ecosystems are cooperative, accelerate migration: staging, pilot, telemetry‑driven remediation, and automation will likely cost less and reduce risk versus multiple years of ESU.
- If you are heavily hardware‑constrained or have many specialized legacy apps, consider hybrid approaches: isolate legacy workloads, migrate user desktops to Windows 11 where feasible, and use virtualization/cloud for legacy applications — this reduces both ESU exposure and migration disruption.
Final analysis: is it worth staying on Windows 10?
The simple financial headline — $7.3 billion — is a useful alarm bell that communicates scale: a lot of organizations will collectively face meaningful expenditure if they uniformly choose ESU for a large Windows 10 population. But for an individual organization, the calculus is granular: ESU is defensive insurance that is costly month‑to‑month but sometimes cheaper than impulsive hardware replacement or rushed migrations. Conversely, a well‑scoped migration program that uses telemetry, pilot groups, cloud options, and vendor coordination often proves cheaper and less risky over a three‑year horizon than buying ESU repeatedly and maintaining a legacy estate.The organizations that will succeed are those that treat migration as a strategic program: start with accurate inventory, apply telemetry to prioritize risk, use pilots to reduce unknowns, and choose a mixture of upgrade, virtualization, and short‑term ESU where it makes financial and operational sense. That balanced approach turns headline fear into a practical roadmap.
Conclusion
The Nexthink‑informed headline that “sticking with Windows 10 could cost businesses billions” is true as a macro economic signal: a large Windows 10 population multiplied by ESU list pricing yields multi‑billion dollar exposure. But the right choice is not binary. The most defensible posture for IT leaders is pragmatic: immediately inventory and categorize, buy targeted breathing room only where required, pilot and automate migration for the high‑impact workloads, and favor containment plus modernization over indefinite reliance on paid legacy support. In short, the billion‑dollar figure is a call to action — not a mandate to pay it.
Source: TechRadar Sticking with Windows 10 could cost business billions - so is it really worth it?
