Dive Brief:

• Accenture says it will upgrade its 400,000 employees to Windows 10 by 2018, according to a announcement by Microsoft’s director of product marketing and an Accenture case study.
• The consulting giant is motivated to make the move so it can serve as an "example of what digital transformation can bring." Accenture took a "two-lane" deployment approach, where the first lane, which began in April 2016, moved all new PCs to Windows 10 along with early adopters who underwent a manual update. In August 2016, the second lane of the update took on updating Windows 7 PCs. 
• Accenture employees will be able to access Windows 10, Office 365 and the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security Suite. Accenture has the biggest OneDrive in the world at over 6 petabytes, according to Microsoft.

Dive Insight:

As with many vendors, Accenture wants to illustrate it too is using the most up-to-date technology, a personal case study to encourage customers to make the transition too. The consulting firm has been a long-time customer of Microsoft, using its products across lines of business.

Microsoft has been pushing companies to upgrade to Windows 10 since the OS was released last year, emphasizing its security benefits in particular. But some companies are reluctant given the cost and productivity losses involved in a major enterprise upgrade. Several studies show that, despite Windows 10’s rise, Windows 7 is still the most popular OS.

But with major computer viruses and ransomware targeting older versions of Microsoft operating systems, that could soon change. For most companies, the cost of the upgrade can be significantly less than the costs involved in falling victim to ransomware like the global WannaCry.