Reluctant to Adopt Windows Vista For Your Business? You Are Not Alone, a Survey Finds
If your business has not upgraded its computer network to Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system – and doesn’t intend to anytime soon – you have a lot of company.
As of June 30, Microsoft plans to stop selling its previous-version Windows XP operating system, though it will continue to provide support for XP until 2014. But, according to a new survey from New York-based broker-dealer Sanford C. Bernstein & Co., the corporate world has not exactly been rushing to Vista.
In fact, the survey found, commitment among information technology executives is eroding, thanks largely to the costs involved and bad publicity that has plagued the operating system. So deep is the resistance among some users that a movement has emerged urging Microsoft Corp. to keep XP on the market indefinitely.
Bernstein surveyed 372 IT professionals with input into and control over PC-related decisions regarding their companies’ adoption of Vista. It found that just 8.1 percent predicted they would adopt Vista within two years of its launch. Also: 20.1 percent expect to have it deployed after three years and only 26 percent expected it after four years.
Those figures represent a striking drop in support. In a Bernstein survey completed a year earlier, 30.8 percent expected adoption after two years; 51.4 percent expected adoption after three years; and 67.6 percent expected adoption after four years.
“The inescapable conclusion of our 2008 survey is that support for Vista has been battered across all enterprise sizes and corporate constituencies,” the Bernstein report says.
Why are businesses backing away?
“The main reason is that Vista does not meet the need for many users,” especially in the business world, said Bill Snyder, a columnist for InfoWorld magazine and a veteran technology journalist.
Bad Publicity, High Costs
Snyder said he personally finds Vista to be “incrementally better” than the Windows XP operating system. But, he adds, the advantages can be more compelling for consumers – who might buy only one PC at a time – than for enterprises, which might have to upgrade or replace millions of dollars worth of hardware.
For many business PC buyers, Snyder said, the benefits of Vista often are not enough to overcome the extra hardware costs, any potential problems with compatibility and security, as well as the inherent complexity involved with switching from any operating system to another. For all those reasons, he said, it is not unusual for some businesses to skip a generation of operating systems regardless of the system involved.
The Bernstein report says “overwhelmingly bad publicity” about Vista has hurt its support among corporate executives, but cost is the main reason so many companies are sticking with Windows XP – or whatever older version of Windows they might be running.
“In particular,” the report says, “respondents reported a substantial drop in their expectations of in-place upgrades, indicating a rise in their expectation of hardware-related costs associated with Vista deployments. These hardware requirements were the single largest negative factor affecting Vista adoption. Concerns about driver and application compatibilities, and implicitly the related costs in a rollout, were the second and third biggest negative factors, followed closely by Vista pricing itself as the fifth largest factor (behind performance).”
They Still Like XP
Bryan Ochs, director of product development for New Horizons Worldwide Inc., an IT training company, said training in XP-related applications still represent 66 percent of the training requested by its clients, while Vista applications represent about 33 percent.
Ochs said the continued commitment to XP does not necessarily mean that Vista has been “a flop” with business users. And in all cases, he said, the adoption of new software “is not something everyone jumps into.” And, in a sluggish economy, many companies are reluctant to spend money on anything that isn’t absolutely vital.
Part of the problem with Vista, Ochs said, could be that too many companies are not yet ready to upgrade their existing hardware. When they do that, he said, many companies who are using XP now may well switch to Vista. Others might decide to wait for the next generation of Windows before upgrading.
But whether it’s driven by a dislike of Vista, or simply a “don’t fix what isn’t broken” attitude, there are those who don’t want Windows XP to go away. InfoWorld is helping to lead the charge. It has a special “Save XP” page on its Web site http://weblog.infoworld.com/save-xp/archives/2008/06/sign_the_save_x.html which includes an online petition signed by more than 200,0000 people and a message board where computer users can weigh in on the XP vs. Windows debate.
For its part, Microsoft says it’s flattered by the devotion to XP. “But our commitment to innovation sometimes means making tough choices,” the company’s Web site says. “This is one of them.”
To read or download a copy of the Bernstein report (19 pages, PDF format), click here.
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If your business has not upgraded its computer network to Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system – and doesn’t intend to anytime soon – you have a lot of company.
