Microsoft grows despite Windows Vista
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Wow not now Not that you'd know it from Microsoft's results, or projected revenue, but the giant launched a brand-spanking new version of Windows this year.â¦
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Linux's server growth is slowing vis-a-vis Windows server growth.  The reasons are several.  The answer is clear: take on Microsoft directly.
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Even though the platform has seemingly been forgotten by many in the media after lots of initial buzz, Microsoft is still pressing ahead in the UMPC space.
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Many XP users still not really fans of the Vista.
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Software maker expands its Windows-lite offerings.
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By Jessica Mintz  Acrobatics, blaring music and plenty of hype accompanied Microsoft Corp.'s long-delayed debut of its new Windows Vista operating system.
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At his Sunday-evening CES keynote, Bill Gates announced that Microsoft has sold more than 100 million Vista licenses so far. The number requires some elucidation.
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There are more signs that, at least in theory, the dominance of Microsoft&#39;s (Nasdaq: MSFT) Windows operating system may be slightly less potent than, say, a year ago this time.
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Microsoft Corp.   said on Thursday it sees no reason why its new Windows Vista  operating system would be delayed, but it stopped short of  committing to its previously stated launch target.
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(InfoWorld) - Thursday was finally windows Vista launch day. But though banners were flying in downtown Manhattan on the big day, celebrating the launch of Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange 2007, CEO Steve Ballmer made it clear that the company is anxious to move on, while business customers pegged for Vista adoption wondered whether there was really much to celebrate. âThereâs a bunch of work we still need to do,â Ballmer said of the next Windows client OS. Supporting the shift from single-core to multicore chips and improvements in network infrastructure are priorities. Microsoft also wants to add more features to meet the needs of IT administrators, software developers and end-users. âHow we do software plus service within Windows is going to continue to be a big theme,â Ballmer said. Enterprise customers were wary. âSure itâs a big day for Microsoft, but what are we really getting?â asks Paul Lindo, an independent New York IT consultant. âWith all the delays and features being dropped, this looks to me like it might just be Windows XP with a prettier face.â Vista suffered several features âadjustmentsâ as well as a lengthier-than-expected road to shrink, including the infamous 2004 dumping of WinFS and a ground-up re-programming effort. But now that the day is finally here, Microsoft is well pleased with its new OS offering. âIt may have been a long road, but watching how our early adopters are responding to the platform, we know weâve got a winner,â said Brad Goldberg, Microsoftâs general manager of client product management. Responding to views such as Lindoâs, Goldberg said he remained assured. âVista was designed specifically to give business users recognizable benefits over the last generation platform,â he said. âThat includes productivity, security, networking and noticeably less reliance on IT.â Those last two items especially represent significant development efforts, covering the new UAC authentication model, updated internal diagnostics (including error messages that actually speak English), a completely revamped networking client and new IT tools such as the Reliability Monitor -- a quick dashboard of system reliability. These features were built specifically so users would spend less time talking to the help desk, thus decreasing overall IT spending. Windows is far better prepared for initial deployment than its predecessors, Goldberg said, citing more than a year of overall QA effort, by far the longest QA period in Microsoftâs history. Despite the enterprise focus of some features, it will still be consumers who lead the charge on Vista adoption. According to a report released by IDC last week, Vista will account for 90 percent of new Windows client deployments in 2007 by home users, compared with just 35 percent of new Windows client deployments by businesses.
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Although Microsoft's forthcoming operating system, Windows Vista, has slipped from its proposed ship date several times, a Wall Street analyst is now predicting Microsoft will be able to remain on schedule from this point forward.
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(InfoWorld) - In the first year of its release, Microsoft Corp. is expecting businesses to adoptÂ Windows Vista twice as fast as any other version of Windows, with 10 times as many Vista business seats deployed at launch than any previous release of the OS. Despite this optimism, analysts still don't expect businesses to begin adopting Vista in earnest until late 2007 or even 2008, with many waiting for the first service pack version of Vista before they begin considering an upgrade. One reason Microsoft is expecting Vista to be so successful is that the company has made a concerted effort to give customers the tools and training they need to adopt Vista across their businesses, said Brad Goldberg, general manager of the Windows Client Business Group at Microsoft. The company also put test versions of the OS into as many people's hands as possible. For the previous Windows migration, to Windows XP, Microsoft didn't release important tools to help businesses upgrade -- such as a compatibility toolkit to ensure existing applications will work -- until Service Pack 2, which was released nine months after Windows XP shipped, he said. However, with Windows Vista, "we made the beta of the [compatibility] toolkit available with Windows Vista Beta 2," Goldberg said. Microsoft also has opened up test versions of the OS to a wide audience, making Release Candidate 1 (RC1) available to the public. Microsoft expects that at least 5 million users will have access to Vista RC1, all of whom the company has encouraged to provide feedback about the release so it can be as polished as possible before it goes out to business customers in November. Another reason Microsoft expects businesses to warm to Vista early is that the company is doing its share to educate customers on how much money they can save by adopting it, Goldberg said. Microsoft has worked with analysts to develop customer case studies to see how much money business customers can save per PC by upgrading to Vista from their current OS. Al Gillen, an analyst with research firm IDC, does not dispute Microsoftâs calculations for the return on investment (ROI) companies will make on Windows Vista, though he says that companies âdonât get the âRâ unless they put in the âIâ first.â âThe ROI story is exciting, but it requires that customers be mature and agile enough to do what they need to do afterwards,â Gillen said. And while Microsoft may meet its ambitious first-year goals for Vista, that momentum will likely peter out, once pent-up demand has been met, Gillen said. âEighteen months out, the adoption curve will look like any other Windows product,â Gillen said. âItâs hard to move corporate customers faster than they are willing to go.â Microsoftâs bullish projections donât appear to jibe with most current third-party customer surveys, such as one online survey of 314 IT professionals conducted by Computerworld in August. Just 17 percent of IT professionals say they are considering rolling out Windows Vista in the first year. Forty-one percent of respondents said they had no plans to roll out Vista, while 35 percent said they would begin testing Vista only after it ships. Of those who said they were considering rolling out Vista in the near or long-term, the largest group (29 percent) said the cost was the biggest determinant of if and when they would upgrade. That was followed by the hardware requirements (16 percent), the amount of employee training (6 percent) and the amount of IT staff retraining (4 percent). Even if Microsoft doesn't meet its goals for Vista, it's not likely to affect the company's revenue. According to one financial analyst firm, Microsoft stands to lose only about $400 million in revenue in fiscal 2008 if Vista business adoption does not go according to the company's plan, and $2 billion in fiscal 2009. In its most recent fiscal year ended June 30, Microsoft reported more than $44 billion in revenue. While the company is optimistic about adoption in its marketing, it is being far more conservative in its financial estimates, analysts said. This is obviously good news for Microsoft, but there is a downside. The longer Vista is available, the more it will cost the company if businesses continue to hold off on adopting the OS. And any negative press or analyst feedback on lackluster Vista adoption could drive Microsoft's stock price down, analysts said. (Eric Lai is a senior writer at Computerworld.)
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The OS is chugging along on strong PC sales and antipiracy efforts, but Microsoft still faces some grumbling and a long haul in corporate sales.
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'But you should upgrade now' A less-annoying version of Windows Vista is still several months away.â¦
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It's hard to be faithful when you're as big as Microsoft is.
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Blog: Revenue from Windows Vista and Office 2007 releases propels the software giant over $50 million for fiscal year.
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Microsoft beat Wall Street expectations for both revenue and EPS (earnings per share) for its fiscal 2008 second quarter, attributing its strong quarter to sales of core client products, such as Windows Vista and Office 2007, as well as Exchange and SharePoint server software.