Windows Vista has managed to deliver an experience at the opposite pole of the Wow, becoming in this context a bitter disappointment for Microsoft. The Redmond company now has to deal with the very realistic perspective that customers will skip this generation of the Windows client entirely. And although the first service pack for Vista, currently cooking over at Microsoft and planned for the first quarter of 2008, could act as incentive to drive up the adoption of the operating system, the company is offering almost concomitantly the third and final service pack for Windows XP by the summer of next year. This move is effectively designed to take the wind out of Vista's sales, SP1 or no SP1.

Wind? Did I say wind? I meant to say fading breeze. One year following the RTM of Vista, Microsoft's count of operating system licenses shipped into the channel was 88 million. The figure indicates with no doubt that Vista is selling. At least to general consumers. And that with the holiday seasons at the door, Microsoft might just hit and go over the 100 million sold copies milestone. But at the same time, the corporate environment is still timid when it comes to embracing Windows Vista. Recent studies made available by Forrester and King Research indicated that although Vista's uptake will pick up in 2008 with the advent of SP1, the vast majority of businesses have no plans whatsoever to migrate their environments to the latest Windows client. Microsoft even issued an official response to the King Research study.

"Without having looked at the study, it's hard to know whether or not there's any selection bias. The Forrester report, other studies and our own internal data show that business adoption is on a normal trajectory for a new OS at this point in its life cycle, and we are seeing positive indicators in the market that more customers are seeing value in Windows Vista and are starting to plan, test or begin their deployments", the company commented according to Microsoft Watch.

At the same time, inquiries from Silicon.com about Vista migration plans, addressed at 12 Chief Information Officers from major companies belonging to different markets, revealed that only one business actually had plans to move to the latest Windows platform in 2008 after SP1. The remaining respondents either discussed the possibility of migration starting with 2009, or indicated that they will ride out XP plus SP3 for all that the platform's got for three more years and move directly to Windows 7. Microsoft's position all this time is that ignoring Vista is an action equivalent with ignoring the inevitable.