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Skipping Windows Vista — What’s the Best Strategy for IT Pros?
Recently, Microsoft released its quarterly earnings reporting, detailing a continuing problem with the adoption of Windows Vista.
The new operating system has not been adopted as quickly or as wide-spread as previous OS upgrades from Microsoft.
Now, with the financial problems of 2008 in full swing, Microsoft said to analysts that they expect corporate IT budgets will be reduced for the remainder of 2008 and most likely for 2009 as well.
With industry analysts expecting a release date of late 2009 for the new Windows 7 operating system, it may be the case that Vista never becomes a widely adopted platform.
While Vista has long been the subject of unflattering reviews and criticism (some deserved and some not so deserved), most IT professionals have been moving forward assuming that eventually Vista would replace Windows XP, and then, of course, be replaced itself some time in the future as part of the natural cycle of upgrades.
After all, legions of systems engineers live by the motto, "Wait for SP1." Now, some debate has shifted to whether or not it is best for the enterprise, or for consulting clients to skip Vista altogether and just wait for Windows 7.
Is Skipping Vista A Good Idea?
Indeed, PC World recently published an item entitled Five Reasons Why Skipping Vista Could Backfire, based on a Gartner research report: Understand the Risks of Skipping Windows Vista from earlier this summer, which suggests that both organizations sensed a large enough question in the business community to produce such a study.
The report suggested that skipping Vista could actually lead to more problems, most notably, because Microsoft may not be able to deliver Windows 7 without some delays, and due to the fact that most ISVs take 12 to 18 months to offer full support for a new operating system, a delayed Windows 7 shipping in Q2 of 2010 could mean a company running on the aging XP platform for another 30 to 40 months.
Not a pretty picture. Even worse, as the study notes, budget cycles, and vendor software development cycles may not match up with the organization waiting for Windows 7.
While organizations today have the option of holding off on the upgrade to Vista until 2009 due to continued support from virtually all technology companies for Windows XP, such support will begin to taper off.
What the study does not mention, is that the Windows 7 user interface will be much more like the Windows Vista interface than the Windows XP interface. While it is true that some early adopters of Windows Vista experienced significant problems with their systems, it is also true that much of the grumbling has come from users and employees who were simply used to Windows XP and resented the need to learn something new in order to use their computer.
These legions of users were the ones who pushed the "Vista Sucks" belief beyond the smaller universe of users who actually had trouble with their systems and into the realm of "common knowledge."
Skipping Vista will not help these users who will be just as shell shocked when they migrate to Windows 7.
Vista Going Mainstream
While Vista sales are disappointing for Microsoft right now, the fact is that Vista is beginning its journey to the mainstream. Thanks, in part, to Microsoft’s declining willingness to allow any vendors to continue shipping Windows XP systems, Windows Vista is becoming more common on the desktop every day.
In fact, a significant percentage of the under-sales of Windows Vista is now due not to users continuing to get Windows XP machines, but rather due to the increasing adoption of so called netbooks or other systems which have a base-level OS and are used primarily for directly booting into online access.
Such systems use either a stripped down Windows OS or Linux, and thus contribute to the decline in Vista sales since the buyers of such systems would have normally had to buy a standard desktop with the current OS.
As Vista systems become more the norm, both retail customers and corporate users will become less willing to tolerate the notion that a software product is just fine, but Vista broke it.
Two years after the release of Vista and an impending SP2, make such assertions less believable which means that software companies will be working hard to upgrade their products to full power while running on Vista.
A declining economy means that most companies will be required to do such a thing with fewer developers, not more, which inevitably leads to a slow down of support and upgrades for non-Vista products.
Best Strategy for IT Pros
Despite the release of Windows Server 2008 and its improved features for rolling out upgrades, migrating to a new operating system is never an enviable task. However, making the same migration in a wholesale manner (forklift upgrades as Gartner calls them) won’t be any easier in a few years.
One of the main problems with Vista came from its inability to support the vast array of drivers and peripherals that people had installed on their machines. So the upgrades from XP were the most painful.
By moving now to implement an infrastructure capable of leveraging Vista’s features, and more importantly, being fully compatible with both Vista and XP, an organization can start bringing Vista in on new machines being added or replaced due to natural lifecycle.
This eliminates all the issues from upgrading and positions those machines in a much better place to be upgraded to Windows 7 when the time comes. When that deployment rolls around in 2010 or 2011, the only systems left running XP will be the ones due for refreshing anyway, and then the migration can start via newly purchased "clean" systems instead of upgrades.
The biggest factor for IT professionals though will be to not skip updating their skills and training for Windows Vista.
As we all know, job security can be shaky in this industry even for the most qualified and it won’t be long before a resume without Vista on it just doesn’t hold up.
In addition, the skill for Vista will be more directly transferable to Windows 7 which is being built on the Vista code base.
So keep reading and keep learning. You’ll need to know Vista, now or next year.
Related Posts
The Future of Computing — Part 2: TouchSmart PC & Windows 7 (September 8, 2008)
Vista is for Suckers and Mac Users are Better Than You (May 19, 2008)
Has Microsoft Taken the Work Out of Hacking Vista? (April 11, 2008)
Installing Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows Vista (April 3, 2008)
How to Create a Backup Image in Windows Vista and XP (September 12, 2007)
Exploring the Windows Vista Sidebar (August 29, 2007)
6 Responses to “Skipping Windows Vista — What’s the Best Strategy for IT Pros?”
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David Lawlor Says:
November 18th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Great article Brian! One of the annoying things that come out of Gartner and Forrester is that their analysts even within the company don’t agree on forecasts and depending on who publishes that month can send mixed messages.
IT departments need to look past the hype from both sides and really get into what their departments need. Heck I would still be running Windows 2000 Pro if it was up to me, the last OS I truly loved from MS, upgrading to XP caused me to say everything that people said about Vista when it came out. I have been playing with the PDC build of Windows 7 and I can tell anyone who thinks it is something radically different then Vista they are going to be disappointed. I could definitely see waiting to a Server 2008 rollout and then looking at upgrading clients under that umbrella as it might be an easier sell to the higher ups.
Anyway, again great article!
Dave
Fred Stam Says:
November 20th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
While it’s inevitable that both users and support people will have to face the new Vista paradigm, the consensus here is that it would be better done with a “fixed” version 7 then with the current offering. Most new systems coming across our desks are being downgraded to Windows XP. Not because users mind learning something new, but more because the features in Vista are not necessarily an improvement. We have applications that function well under XP. Upgrading to Vista simply increases the cost for hardware, applications and support while doing little to improve productivity. As an example consider Vista’s woefully inadequate accessibility features when compared to Apple’s.
Many support personnel remember Windows Me (while MS does it’s best to forget it), and just as many have likened Vista to Me. Having just completed upgrades to Vista SP1 on 3 different systems with an additional 137MB Windows update, I can agree with the comparison.
Daily I have the option of working on different platforms including Vista, Apple and Linux. However I’ll stick with my 3 year old HP notebook running a fast and well plotted XP Pro and wait as many others will for the new fixed Vista (Win 7).
Nery Barba Says:
November 20th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
I think there its no necesari upgrade to windows vista its just a OS whit god face. I upgrade all my laptops to ubuntu Linx even those vista preinstaled.
KG John Justin Says:
November 20th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
It is natural phenomenon that people are relcutant shift to another stage from the standing one. They feel comfortable and consider themselves secured and safe to use aged system on pretext of some silly excuses.
Microsoft was in hury to launch new in operating system in 2006 due to 5 yrs gap between windows XP. They visisoned less and realsed new OS with full of new code. They forget to do complete testing of features and security of it. It leads to lot of bugs and security threat in Vista. Otherwise it could have been another successfull OS from Ms for user. Microsft has to understand from its mistake to correct the Windows 7.
Sudden switching over from Windows Xp to Windows 7 will have umpteem problems like drivers and compatability of softwares etc. The corporate sector will develop software for windows XP whereas direct jump will give them more problem than expected solution. Since MS going to stick with architecture of Windows Vista and hardware compatabilty for new OS. Now, the time has come to prepare and upgrade them for shifting over to windows 7.
Windows 7 is MS committment not a tested and successfull OS verison, lets wait its turn play and how market and user going to react after seeing its performance. MS spends lot of money for ads of Vista. Bad product eating market is difficult.
Ken McAvoy Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 1:06 am
Most of the criticism from IT Practitioners who actually have to break/fix PC’s on a daily basis quickly saw that VISTA was not going to be an OS of choice because it failed to include a decent Repair/Restore option like the one included in XP which whilst not that elegant helped most of us get out of jail a lot. The driver issue whilst a pain was not as big a deal as you writers like to think. It was actually the fact that VISTA offered nothing new , except cost of course , did not actually make systems significantly more secure and actually was a heck of a lot slower and the user interface and design was changed in areas like the Start Bar and Control Panel and that was not welcomed or appreciated and my take is that it just alienated users and support personnel alike.It was seen as just having change for the sake of change and a lot of that change was cosmetic , not as appealing as Microsoft would have you believe and certainly an awful lot of X P users rejected that outright. Microsoft in its blind arrogance and ignorance is doing the same with Windows 7 so what hope have we got. I am working on missing Windows 7 as well. Heck by the time someone in Microsoft actually decides to listen to the views of other people who remain unimpressed by what Microsoft are NOT doing I will be in a Nursing Home so it really is not going to matter that much to me is it .
I do not think Microsoft or many of the Technical Writers out there really appreciate how much of the baby they have tossed out with the bathwater. There is an old business adage ‘ if it is not broke do not try to fix it ‘ well Microsoft’s tinkering with the new is annoying a lot of people who would have preferred they fixed what they already had. The days of issuing a new OS every 18 months are gone. We are heading back to longer term cost benefit analysis , very tight budgets and buying things that we want and can use our way - as for Microsoft go surf in the clouds most of us ordinary folks don’t own nor can we fly planes.
Ken
IT Director
Melbourne
Ron Says:
November 21st, 2008 at 7:09 pm
I agree with the article as far as most of the criticism I have seen about Vista comes from folks who did not want to learn something new. Trust me when I say I was not thrilled the first time I wanted to change my nic settings. Just those little things can definitely put people off. Out in the field I see quite a bit of Vista. Many of our clients run Vista Business and yes we ran into compatibility issues but nothing we were not able to fix. I run Vista Ultimate on my laptop and will never go back to XP. My big test for an OS has always been my wife. With XP I still had to help her out when she had issues. I am not sure why but she has not asked me for any assistance since I loaded Vista on her computer. She loves it and is not techie by any means. Every OS has its issues but for me and for my clients Vista has not been a major one by any means.