According to Gartner the global customer relationship management (CRM) software market totals $26.3 billion in 2015, a 12.3% increase from $23.4bn in 2014.

"The merger and acquisition activity that began flowing through the market in 2009 continued in 2015, with more than 30 notable acquisitions," the analyst says. "This has resulted in increased competition at the top end of the CRM market, with the continued focus of global vendors' sales forces driving good growth worldwide in all CRM subsegments but only for cloud or software as a service (SaaS) applications."

In way of pushing Windows 10 upgrades Microsoft announces Windows 7 or 8.1 will not run on PCs based on upcoming Intel and AMD CPUs-- essentially ending the company's longstanding support policy.

Historically Microsoft offered 10 years of support for each Windows release. However the policy change dictates "new silicon generations [...] require the latest Windows platform at that time for support." These include the upcoming Intel "Kaby Lake," Qualcomm "8996" and AMD "Bristol Ridge" chipsets.

In the future Microsoft will specify a number of 6th generation Skylake CPUs able to run Windows 7 and 8.1-- a strategy the company claims "ensures customers can upgrade now to new devices their employees will love while preparing for a Windows 10 upgrade." Such systems get guaranteed Windows 7 and 8.1 support through 17 July 2017, providing customers an 18-month grace period to upgrade to modern hardware.

Windows 10 will be the most widely installed version of Windows, Gartner reports-- according to the analyst 50% of enterprises will be running Windows 10 deployments by 2017.

"In the consumer market, a free upgrade coupled with broad legacy device support and automatic over-the-air upgrades ensures that there will be tens of millions of users familiar with the OS before the end of 2015," Gartner says. "For enterprises, we expect that implementation will be significantly more rapid than that seen with Windows 7 six years ago."

Several factors drive migration-- awareness of the January 2020 end of Windows 7 support, strong Windows 7 application and devices compatibility, and tablet/2-in-1 device rollout demand. Gartner expects enterprises to start Windows 10 pilots on H1 2016, before broadening deployments on H2 2016.

Munich is famous for running public administration on Linux-- but a pair of councillors from the conservative CSU party are demanding the city switches back to Windows and Microsoft Office.

A letter to the mayor from Sabine Pfeiler and Otto Seidl describes the notebooks, tablets and smartphone running on Linux-based software (specifically "LiMux," a version of Kubuntu 12.04 developed specifically for the city) used by council as "cumbersome" and lacking in familiar software such as Office and Skype. As a result many town councillors bring their own notebooks to work, leaving a "large number" of Linux-based devices unused.

Further complaints involve a lack of user permissions.