Windows 11: 8 Big Updates For SMBs

‘Rather than necessarily building an entire app, you can just land those in Teams and have them desktop accessible, which is probably going to be a big thing,’ Jared Cheney, regional vice president of technology services for North America at SoftwareONE, tells CRN in an interview.

The launch of Microsoft’s new operating system, Windows 11, brings a batch of new features and capabilities that aim to help small and medium-sized businesses improve operations, from security improvements to an easier way to implement multiple desktops and fewer future OS updates.

Although multiple solution providers have told CRN that they dread the conversation with SMB clients on migrating to the new operating system, some have praised the new design of Windows 11, the focus on security and making some Windows 10 functionality easier to implement.

Bobby Guerra, CEO of Jacksonville, Fla.-based Microsoft partner Axiom, told CRN in an interview that the forced security upgrade will make that part of the conversation easier with clients.

“A lot of businesses underestimate the importance of that, especially from a compliance perspective,” Guerra said. “It‘s just really nice knowing that that’s going to be a requirement now because it’s a crapshoot on a (Windows) 10 (device) whether the client has encryption on, whether they have the capability of even doing encryption. So the fact that they’re drawing the sand, the line in the sand is greatly appreciated.”

Jared Cheney, regional vice president of technology services for North America at SoftwareONE — a Switzerland-based Microsoft partner with American offices that include Chicago and New York and and a member of CRN’s Elite 150 managed service providers — told CRN in an interview that one of the key features Windows 11 brings for his company’s smaller clients is a embedded Teams experience.

“Rather than necessarily building an entire app, you can just land those in Teams and have them desktop accessible, which is probably going to be a big thing,” he said. “A lot of the customers that are using Dynamics a bit heavier, if they‘ve already integrated Teams, it just makes it that much easier to push in.”

Here’s what you need to know.

TPM 2.0 Requirement Makes Security Easier

Bobby Guerra, CEO of Jacksonville, Fla.-based Microsoft partner Axiom, told CRN in an interview that one of the features he likes most for SMBs using Windows 11 is mandating disk encryption.

A recent study from Belgium-based IT asset management services provider Lansweeper showed that almost half of workstations won’t upgrade to Windows 11 automatically due to not meeting the TPM 2.0 security chip requirement or not having it enabled.

Along with the much-discussed requirement for a TPM 2.0 security chip, Windows 11 also requires a CPU released in the past four years.

Snap Updates

Guerra told CRN that another feature he’s happy about for his small business clients is new Snap Layouts and consistency when users dock and undock their machines.

“The understanding of profiles, as far as if you‘re doing docking so that all the windows snap, and you have the ability to snap them between the desktops natively, is great,” he said. “That’s a big one for us.”

Windows 11 presents new Snap Layouts through the windows maximize button to more precisely size a window on the screen. The Snap Assist tool can guide users on possible arrangements for multiple windows. Snap’s three-column layouts require “a screen that is 1920 effective pixels or greater in width,” according to Microsoft.

When users need to undock machines and leave their desk, the windows on monitors will minimize, with everything coming back once the user re-docks, according to Microsoft.

App Compatibility

For small businesses whose PCs do meet the hardware requirements for Windows 11, the move to Windows 11 is not sparking the same concerns about application compatibility that plagued the move from Windows 7 to 10.

Solution providers who spoke with CRN said that they’re viewing the upgrade to Windows 11 as only slightly more involved than moving to a new Windows 10 feature update. “It’ll be a much smoother transition” to Windows 11 than it was to Windows 10, Kevin Vogl, senior solutions architect at MessageOps, a division of Sirius based in Boca Raton, Fla., said.

During tryouts of Windows 11 by Vogl and other members of the MessageOps team, “it has been very stable,” he said. “No one’s had the ‘blue screen of death.’ When I tried out Windows 10 [originally], I had that quite a few times. I’m actually shocked at how well it’s worked.”

In terms of compatibility, Microsoft has described Windows 11 as being “built on the same foundation as Windows 10.” The company has stated that “critical” apps will “simply work” after a device is upgraded to Windows 11.

There appears to be truth to the claims, according to industry analysts. While the usual testing for compatibility will be necessary, the jump is not as large because the codebase for Windows 11 isn’t a huge departure from Windows 10, said J.P. Gownder, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester.

“When we moved from Windows 7 to 10, it was a very big technical upgrade. Even if you were on 8.1, there was a big technical change,” Gownder said. “The codebase of Windows 11 is very similar to Windows 10. I think of it as almost being like ‘Windows 10.1.’”

While there’s always some level of risk in moving to any new operating system, “all indications from the people that I know at Microsoft are that they’re very confident about this” from a compatibility standpoint, he said.

Yearly Updates

Small business users of Windows 11 will have to worry about major updates less often with the new OS because Windows 11 will shift to once-a-year feature updates, as opposed to the twice-a-year cadence with Windows 10.

“It’s great, just because it’s less churn and less to keep up with and prepare for,” said Zach Saltzman, senior director for the Microsoft platform at Carlsbad, Calif.-based FMT Consultants. “For the customer, it’s less overhead for the IT organization. It saves IT hours and cycles of rolling stuff back or troubleshooting issues.”

Microsoft has promised annual major features updates for Windows 11, down from the two feature updates Windows 10 users see, according to the company.

The Home, Pro, Pro for Workstations, and Pro Education editions of Windows 11 have 24 months of support from the general availability date, while Enterprise, IoT Enterprise and Education editions of Windows 11 are supported for 36 months.

Windows 10 Enterprise, Education, IoT Enterprise, Pro, Pro Education, Pro for Workstations and Home editions, however, have 18 months of support, by comparison, according to Microsoft.

Devices on in-service versions of Windows 10 will receive monthly Windows 10 security updates and incremental improvements through October 2025, according to Microsoft.

Originally released in July 2015, the end-of-support date for Windows 10 would give the operating system just over a 10-year run.

More Teams Integration

Microsoft has previously shown a “one-touch” experience for launching Teams communications — including chat, call and video calls — which doesn’t require users to first fully open the Teams app.

Teams will be placed “front and center” in the taskbar in Windows 11, and users will also be able to mute and unmute their mic and share their desktop or an application directly from the taskbar, according to Microsoft.

Multiple Desktops Simplified

Microsoft has enabled a way to toggle between different virtual desktops on Windows 11 that should make the feature easier to implement for users, Cheney said. The feature may bring Mac’s OS to mind for some users.

Users can have separate desktops for work and home if they want, or implement separate desktops to avoid clutter on the main desktop, according to Microsoft. Users can also give each desktop a different name and background.

While the feature exists in Windows 10, Microsoft has removed the Timeline application that also popped up in the menu that enables virtual desktops to make the experience better, according to the company. Other features removed from Windows 11 include Wallet and Internet Explorer, which has been succeeded by Microsoft Edge.

Improved Menu Behaviors

Windows 11 users can more easily access common commands in File Explorer — such as cut, copy, paste, and delete — through the top of the menu. App extensions are grouped together below Shell verbs, apps with more than one verb are grouped into a flyout with app attribution and cloud files provider apps are placed next to the Shell commands to hydrate or dehydrate files.

The Windows 10 context menu and lesser-used commands are still available through the “show more options” item at the bottom of the menu.

Share dialog behavior has been improved for Windows 11 through moving discoverability settings for nearby sharing to the top of the dialog. All apps can now participate in the Share dialog as targets, including unpackaged desktop apps and PWAs that are installed through Microsoft Edge, according to the company.

Android Apps

Although the exact date of when Android apps will be available on Windows 11 isn’t yet known, Microsoft has announced that the feature is coming soon. Users will be able to install Android applications through the Amazon Appstore.

Although the feature is present on Windows 10, Windows 11 promises to make the feature easier to access for everyday users, Cheney said.

“The integration of Android apps is going to be interesting, that‘s something that has been not as easy to do in the past,” he said.

Along with the upcoming Android apps feature, the Windows App SDK set of developer components and tools provides a unified set of app programming interfaces aims to provide consistency to any desktop app on Windows 11.

“Windows App SDK APIs will work on Windows 11 and downlevel to Windows 10, version 1809,” according to Microsoft. “This means that as long as your customers are on Windows 10, version 1809, or any later version of Windows, you can use new Windows App SDK APIs and features as soon as they are released, and without having to write version adaptive code.”