AssetMetrix Research Labs, the research arm of AssetMetrix, provider of on-demand decision support for IT management, announced the results of a study into the level of SP2 penetration in the IT environments of 251 North American corporations, consisting of over 136,000 PCs. The analysis found that only 24% of Windows XP PCs surveyed had upgraded to SP2.

“Microsoft allowed a significant period of time to accommodate companies’ demand to test and validate Windows XP SP2 within their IT infrastructure,” said Steve O’Halloran, managing director of AssetMetrix Research Labs. “Based on our research, a substantial number of companies have yet to decide whether to accept or embargo Windows XP SP2. To date, we have observed that 40% of companies using Windows XP have actively avoided upgrading to SP2, and only 7% have actively accepted it. The other 52% of the companies showed no direction or policy towards SP2.

AssetMetrix Research Labs conducted an analysis of over 130,000 Windows XP PCs from 251 corporations ranging in size from 20 to 9,000 employees. On average, Windows XP Service Pack 2 is deployed on less than 25% of all Windows XP PCs.

Smaller companies are more likely to have more PCs using Windows XP, and to have accepted Windows XP Service Pack 2.

Larger companies are less apt to accept Windows XP Service Pack 2 into their Windows XP sub-population compared to smaller companies, regardless of the number of Windows XP found within the company.