The end of the Windows XP life cycle has led to "an interesting situation"--namely, that many organizations don't want to give up the aging OS, but are soon to face the end of support for it from Microsoft.

That's the conclusion of research firm IDC, which earlier this month released a white paper (or "executive brief," to use their parlance) called "Windows 7 Done Right: From Migration to Implementation" (PDF).

The brief includes survey results from IT professionals and end users alike, who were asked to identify their migration plans. Some of the more interesting results:

The IT professionals who participated in the study intend to migrate approximately two-thirds of the Windows XP PCs they are responsible for supporting over to Windows 7. We found that 31.6% of the PCs would be migrated by replacing both the hardware and the OS at the same time. Almost 30% of the PCs would be updated by migrating to a new OS without replacing the hardware (which IDC finds to be a remarkably high number from a historical context).

It's an interesting and informative read, so give it a look if you have a few minutes to spare.