14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is usually mute when it comes down to critics related to its product and traditionally quiet when it comes to reports thrashing Windows Vista. However, there are exceptions to this rule, and with the Redmond giant gearing up for a massive pro-Vista campaign, Christopher Flores, Director Windows Communications, has vehemently denied that customers are waiting for the next iteration of the company's client, Windows 7, and do not adopt Windows Vista Service Pack 1 in mass.
In a report made available by market analysis company Forrester last week, Vista is presented as continuing to fail convincing enterprise users to jump aboard. According to Forrester's study covering over 50,000 enterprise users, Vista is still under 9% adoption in the corporate environment. More than 2,300 companies surveyed indicated that Windows XP is still the dominant operating system with a share of 87%. Calling Vista the "new Coke" for its apparent failure to win over the corporate environment, Forrester claimed that "Vista is still struggling to gain a foothold in large companies".
"Forrester Research analyst Thomas Mendel published a report that claims that Windows Vista has been 'ejected' in the enterprise and suggests to his customers that they should re-evaluate their Windows Vista deployments and consider waiting for Windows 7. Not surprisingly, this is something that we, our millions of enterprise customers, and a bunch of pesky statistics don't agree with," stated Christopher Flores, Director Windows Communications.
At the Microsoft Financial Analyst Meeting 2008 on July 24, 2008; Bill Veghte, Senior Vice President, Online Services & Windows Business Group revealed that the Redmond company witnessed a strong acceleration in the adoption of Windows Vista following the release of Service Pack 1. Veghte also indicated that the uptake of Vista is similar to that of Windows XP.
"This report doesn't reflect the normal enterprise OS adoption cycle. Enterprise adoption of OSes has always been much slower than consumer adoption. After all, upgrading the PC in your living room is easy, but upgrading an entire front and back end infrastructure to thousands of users without downtime is much more complex, and that takes time," Flores added.
Veghte answered "emphatically yes" to the question "Is Vista being adopted by businesses and large Enterprises?". Without commenting on the volume of Vista to XP downgrades, Microsoft revealed that the Vista Enterprise sales are up 20% compared to previous business versions of the Windows client, and that renewal rates for Software Assurance are no less than 80%.
"It's also important to note that we've sold 180 million copies of Windows Vista so far, 40 million of which were in the last quarter alone, and that there are thousands of enterprise customers deploying Windows Vista by the thousands of seats on a weekly basis, including heavy hitters like The United States Air Force, PPG Industries, and Cerner," Flores said.