Report: Small businesses moving to Vista fastest
636589
Nearly half of businesses are in some phase of preparing to update desktops to Windows Vista with small businesses moving the fastest to implement the OS, according to a new report released Monday.The number of organizations evaluating and testing Vista increased from 29 percent in February 2007 to 48 percent by early November 2007, found the report, commissioned by reseller CDW and based on information collected by Walker Information from 772 IT decision makers. Moreover, about 35 percent of companies are currently implementing or have implemented Vista already, compared to 12 percent last February, the report said.The report is the third of a wave of reports on Vista adoption that CDW has done since the OS was in its final testing phases in October 2006. In the latest phase of release, which tracked Vista adoption from October 31 until Nov. 7, 2007, small businesses comprised 53 percent of those companies either using or evaluating Vista. The higher-education segment came in second, with 49 percent reporting that they are evaluating or using the OS, while medium-to-large businesses were third, with 48 percent.Because of lingering hardware and application compatibility issues between existing company IT assets and Vista, CDW still advises customers to move to Vista on a case-by-case basis, said David Cottingham, director of product and partner management at CDW. In the case of small businesses, they may not have the application or hardware dependencies on Windows XP that larger businesses have.&quot;There are still definitely concerns when you get into custom applications in industries that will run on XP,&quot; he said. &quot;If [companies] have custom applications that don&#39;t run on Vista yet, they&#39;re going to stay on XP.&quot;CDW is still selling both XP and Vista, but Cottingham said the company does not have data on which version of the OS is selling more now that Vista has been available to businesses for more than a year. In September, Microsoft had to extend the OEM&#160;license for XP for five more months through June 30, 2008, because of customer demand for the OS. Microsoft had planned to stop selling XP through OEMs and retailers on Jan. 31.For its part, Microsoft has made strides to resolve compatibility issues with updates to Vista, and the numbers from CDW&#39;s survey seem to reflect that. In February, 50 percent of companies said they were buying additional hardware and software assets to migrate to Vista; by November, that number was down to 44 percent.Many believe it&#39;s inevitable that any businesses currently running XP will eventually move to Vista; it&#39;s just a matter of when. The release of Vista SP! (Service Pack 1), which is scheduled to be generally available by the end of March, should serve to increase the numbers of companies adopting Vista. Microsoft issued on Friday a public refresh of the first release candidate for SP1, which suggests the software update will be in its final release according to schedule.However, there is some belief among industry watchers that if Microsoft releases the next version of Windows, code-named Windows Vista 7, by its target of late next year to early 2010, some businesses may opt to skip Vista and move directly from XP to Windows 7 instead.
425015
The release of Microsoft Corp.'s   much-anticipated Windows Vista operating system will  drive $40 billion in economic activity and create 100,000 new  jobs in six European countries next year, a study said on  Thursday.
633676
Forget the people lining up at Best Buy to get Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system. The real selling took place yesterday in a packed ballroom at the Washington Hilton, where more than 3,000 people from local companies and government agencies gathered to catch a glimpse of the new...
561098
InfoWorld - On Wednesday, Microsoft released details of a study it commissioned that found that total cost of ownership for Windows Vista on mobile PCs is $605 less annually than Windows XP.
31778
Microsoft's long, strange trip with Windows Vista came closer to an end Friday as the company released the first release candidate of its next-generation operating system. Jim Allchin made the announcement in an e-mail to TechNet subscribers.
378213
The release of Microsoft Corp.'s   MSFT.O much-anticipated Windows Vista operating system will   drive $40 billion in economic activity and create 100,000 new   jobs in six European countries next year, a study said on   Thursday.
701434
By ROBERT EVATT World Staff Writer  After 5 1/2 years, Microsoft Corp. finally unleashed its new computer operating system, Windows Vista, at local stores Tuesday.
43593
(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp. released tools to help companies deploy Windows Vista, acknowledging that there are deployment and application-compatibility pains enterprise IT managers face when updating business desktops to the new OS. The company unveiled the new tools, Data Encryption Toolkit for Mobile PCs and Virtual Hard Drive (VHD) Test Drive, atÂ the TechEd 2007 conference in Orlando Tuesday. The first helps IT administrators set encryption policies for laptops in an enterprise using the encrypting file system and new Bitlocker features of Windows Vista, said Stella Chernyak, a Vista product manager at Microsoft. The second is a file that can be downloaded from the Internet that allows enterprises to run a virtual version of Vista on PCs for a 30-day evaluation period to see how it will interact with other applications in their systems. The VHD Test Drive is available online, and more information on the Data Encryption Toolkit can be found on Microsoft's Web site. Business adoption of Vista has been a big concern since the OS was released to business customers last November. Many companies said they would hold off on fully deploying the OS longer than they usually do mainly because of concerns about application compatibility. Indeed, Chernyak acknowledged Tuesday in an interview that lack of application compatibility is the biggest challenge enterprise customers face when they deploy Vista. She said this is why Microsoft released the Vista Application Compatibility Toolkit simultaneously with the general availability of the OS instead of some time after, which it has traditionally done. The VHD also gives enterprises a chance to see what applications will be affected by the new OS so they can make compatibility adjustments before investing in Vista. Three of Microsoft's large enterprise customers, Continental Airlines, Charter Communications and health-care company Cerna Corp. also will have major Vista deployments in their enterprise by the end of the year, Chernyak said. Microsoft claims most enterprises are on schedule to a full rollout of Vista 12 to 18 months after its release, which is about normal for a new Windows OS, she said. Still, not everyone is rushing to deploy Vista, and smaller companies in particular are wary of adopting the OS until making certain it will work with everything in their systems. TechEd attendee Ryan Engh, infrastructure manager at 130-person mutual funds company Wasatch Advisors in Salt Lake City, said his company is still about 12 months from beginning a Vista deployment, though two IT staff members are "playing with it" to see how it will interact with applications in the system. "We'd be more aggressive if it wasn't such a drastic change in the operating system," he said. Engh said he was not aware of the new deployment tools from Microsoft, but likely would not use them anyway because he is currently more concerned with application compatibility than actually deploying the OS. "I'm not so worried about the deployment, it's just if the application will actually work on the system," he said. "We're not even worried about [deploying Vista] yet." Microsoft also said at TechEd that it would make its previously announced Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) available by July for Windows Vista with a new feature for monitoring desktop errors so IT managers can identify errors and send a fix across all enterprise desktops at once. MDOP, unveiled in January, consists of software from Microsoft's purchases of Softricity, AssetMetrix, Winternals Software, and DesktopStandard. It rolls up virtualization software from Softricity, asset-management software from AssetMetrix, group policy-management software from DesktopSoftware, and diagnostic and recovery tools from Winternals into a product designed to help companies manage desktops in an enterprise. The Softricity and Winternals components of the pack are already available for Windows XP, said Winni Verhoef, a senior product manager for Microsoft. All of the components of MDOP will be available for Vista in July except the Winternals diagnostic and recovery tools, which won't be available until next year. It is taking Microsoft a bit more time to port those tools to Vista because they had to be rewritten for the new architecture of the client OS, he said. MDOP costs about US$10 per desktop and is available only to Microsoft customers who have purchased its Software Assurance service. Â
303439
Microsoft Corp.  launched Windows Vista for businesses on Thursday, unveiling the first major upgrade of its dominant operating system in five years and predicting that over 200 million people will run new Windows, Office or PC server software by the end of 2007.
207358
Microsoft's operating system from 1.0 to Vista.
272870
A Microsoft study finds that total cost of ownership for Windows Vista on mobile PCs is $605 less annually than Windows XP.
675836
PC owners who bought late last year and planned to take advantage of Microsoft's Windows Vista Express Upgrade program have found that their Vista OS upgrades are taking longer than expected to arrive. They are not amused.
207716
Now that Microsoft has officially unveiled its new Vista operating system for businesses, it is likely that corporate users will begin testing the OS over the next year to see how it fits into their environments.
105418
A Microsoft-sponsored study says that Windows Vista will generate some $70 billion in revenue and create up to 100,000 jobs in the first year of its release. The report also forecasts rapid and widespread adoption of the OS.
238866
Microsoft Corp. released tools to help companies deploy Windows Vista, acknowledging that there are deployment and application-compatibility pains enterprise IT managers face when updating business desktops to the new OS.
700197
Forget the people lining up at Best Buy to get Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system. The real selling took place yesterday in a packed ballroom at the Washington Hilton, where more than 3,000 people from local companies and government agencies gathered to catch a glimpse of the new software....
234485
Microsoft Corp.  launched  Windows Vista for businesses on Thursday and said that by the  end of next year more than 200 million people would use the new  version of its dominant operating system or new office software  and server computer products.