Windows Vista suffers set back

•As analysts skip

Software analysts have described the current buzz being generated by the Windows 7 as a challenge for Microsoft Corporation, as the software giant seem to be facing lots of obstacles in making Windows Vista, a business success.

According to a Gartner survey conducted in October last year and released recently, about 30 per cent of large businesses were likely to skip Vista and a significant number of other companies still hadn’t decided what to do, while anticipating that the main Windows 7 comes on board soonest to remedy upgrade situation.

Cnet reports that Plaudits for Windows 7 combined with a weakening economy, could mean as many as half of businesses deciding to skip Vista entirely, according to Gartner analyst Michael Silver.

“Anyone who was on the fence ... is now pretty much likely to skip,” Silver said, stressing that Microsoft is not trying to discourage businesses from going from XP to 7, but the company is offering a couple of warnings.

“They are incredibly excited [about Windows 7],” says Gavriella Schuster, a senior director in the Windows unit said. “We’re just trying to temper that ... so they are very realistic.”

Although Windows 7 is getting strong early marks, it is not a panacea yet for all of Vista’s pain, Schuster said.

“Businesses have to work through the same application compatibility issues to go from XP to Windows 7 as they would to move from XP to Vista. Although Windows 7 is designed to be highly compatible with Windows Vista, all the things that have made going from XP to Vista a challenge for businesses are also present when going from XP to Windows 7.

Schuster also notes that some of the business-oriented features of Windows 7 only really light up when a business also moves to Windows Server 2008 R2 and starts using Internet Protocol version six (IPV6) networking.

Furthermore, Schuster says, businesses that are going to wait for Windows 7need to pay close attention to their schedule for moving off of Windows XP.

Silver notes that companies find the end of life for the older operating system “kind of sneaks up on them”. In part, that is because Microsoft offers support for its software for so long. Typically Windows releases are supported, at least in some form, for a decade or more. Third-party software makers, however, are keen to support as few operating systems as they need to.

By 2012, he said, many software makers are going to be aiming to drop support for XP, particularly for the latest versions of their products.

In general, Microsoft said those close to deploying Vista should move ahead.
“Keep going,” Schuster said, adding that businesses that move to Vista will find that they will be in good shape to move those same machines to Windows 7.

In addition to the fact that many of the early compatibility and other challenges have been worked out, Schuster notes that many businesses now find themselves with a large number of Vista-capable machines — something that wasn’t the case when the software was initially released.

Schuster said many IT departments have been looking to Microsoft for some support that it still makes sense to move to Vista.

ITREALMS Online ... delivering news for ICT4D