By Shira Ovide 

Microsoft Corp.'s last version of Windows put off business customers, its most important constituency. With a new edition of its operating software scheduled to launch on Wednesday, the company looks set to benefit from a long, hard effort to rebuild corporate goodwill.

Windows 8, the previous version launched in 2012, alienated both corporate customers and their employees with a confusing mishmash of PC and tablet conventions. Rather than upgrading, many companies stuck with earlier versions of Windows that are, by now, at least six years old. Meanwhile, workers shifted to smartphones or other non-Windows devices for many tasks, prompting some corporate technology managers to let slide their desktop software and hardware updates.

For Windows 10, Microsoft went all-out to turn around perceptions among corporate customers. For the better part of a year, it distributed in-progress versions to companies and gathered their feedback, and it sought input from developers of Windows-based business software that help sell its products to companies large and small. It gave special attention to business-focused features such as security and simpler ways to manage fleets of workplace PCs.

The payoff, if there is one, could be a long time coming, given the typically slow pace of corporate upgrade schedules. So far, though, Microsoft's corporate campaign appears to be working.

"I've been pretty surprised by the aggressive stance many of our corporate customers are taking towards Windows 10," said Gartner Inc. analyst Stephen Kleynhans. "We are seeing a much more positive attitude towards getting started earlier with the Windows 10 migration."

Keeping corporate customers happy is essential for Microsoft, which generates more than $42 billion, or more than two-thirds of its annual gross profit, from sales of Windows, the Office productivity-software bundle and other products and services sold to companies. Microsoft wants Windows 10 installed on as many business computers as possible, both to hold on to customers and to sell additional software down the line.

The biggest factor in Microsoft's corporate repair plan was a long lead time. The company started talking with corporations about Windows 10 as early as 2013, offering a chance to look at the software and suggest changes. Many people with purchasing authority have been using the software for months, thanks to an energetic beta-test program. Some 30% of the roughly five million people who downloaded the test version identified themselves as information-technology workers at large companies, Microsoft said.

These early looks gave corporate buyers a head start on what typically is a lengthy period of evaluation before adopting new technology, company officials said.

Microsoft assembled advisory panels of officials from large companies and met with them regularly, in person or on the phone, to discuss Microsoft's confidential plans for Windows 10. The company also discussed Windows' road map with third parties that are essential to Windows' success. For example, the company said it worked with mobile-device security companies to make sure their software worked seamlessly with Windows.

Familiarity breeds comfort in the world of business technology, and these efforts built corporate confidence that the Windows 10 would be a fresh start, said Chris Woodin, director of Microsoft sales operations for SoftChoice Corp., a Toronto company that sells Microsoft software and other technology to big companies. "There is a high level of interest," he said.

Market research confirms that assessment. In a recent survey of information-technology managers, about 73% of respondents said their company planned to adopt Windows 10 within two years, according to the survey of more than 500 IT professionals conducted by Spiceworks, a professional network for information technology workers.

Mr. Woodin and other experts in corporate tech said the recent spate of highly public corporate data breaches have made companies particularly interested in Windows 10's security features. The software segregates employees' personal and corporate data, for example barring an employee from pasting into a Twitter post text copied from a confidential corporate document.

Despite Microsoft's attention to business needs, many corporate customers that choose to upgrade are likely to take their time. It can take at least a year to upgrade from one Windows version to another, as companies wait for Microsoft to work out bugs and make sure essential in-house software runs smoothly. Even companies that like Windows 10 won't necessarily move faster than usual, some corporate customers and PC executives say.

Stephen Hagood, chief information officer of Ingersoll-Rand PLC, believes Windows 10 blends the best elements of recent Windows versions. But he said any broad rollout of Windows 10 at the industrial-products company is at least a year away. He wants to see how the operating software handles important applications used by the 43,000-person company, including the large design files its engineers like to share via email. When the company tested its file sharing methods in Windows 8, attachments took too long to open, Mr. Hagood said.

A Microsoft spokeswoman didn't have an immediate comment. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella last week said he expects companies to start upgrading workplace computers to Windows 10 beginning next year.

Steven Norton

contributed to this article.

Write to Shira Ovide at shira.ovide@wsj.com

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