Microsoft: We Are Selling Windows Vista! Really Now! We Are!

When it's down to Windows Vista there is one simple question that immediately comes to mind: what does Microsoft have to prove? Shipped to business customers in November 2006, and to the general consumers in January 2007, Vista is now well past the first year since it was released to manufacturing. Moreover, Microsoft is focusing its resources on building the first service pack for the operating system. But this does not make the question in the first paragraph less valid. What does Microsoft still have to prove with Windows Vista? Well - everything!

Recently, although the company reported selling in excess of 88 million copies worldwide, Vista has been under a barrage of negative estimates related to its adoption throughout 2008. With all parties except Microsoft in tune about the failure of Vista adoption in the corporate environment, prognostics for the uptake of the operating system in the coming year are not looking any more promising for Microsoft. Well, maybe just a tad, but nowhere near the numbers the Redmond company wants to see out of Windows Vista.

Two recent surveys compiled by Forrester and King Research reveal that Windows Vista adoption will indeed pick up in 2008, with approximately one third of businesses migrating to the new operating system. But Microsoft's position is that this is old news. Microsoft made available a document pointing to several organizations that have deployed Vista for "optimal performance, security and usability." Now, this is nothing more than a marketing trick from Microsoft that is joggling around with Vista adoption examples and numbers in order to fuel the momentum of the operating system. Just remember that the Redmond company still has everything to prove with Vista.

"Prominent organizations and leading companies from around the world continue to standardize their IT environment with Windows and upgrade to Windows Vista. During Microsoft's first fiscal quarter of 2008, thousands of organizations renewed or signed new volume licensing agreements for Windows. The strong uptake of these long-term agreements indicates that there are a growing number of businesses that are seeing the value of deploying Windows Vista", Microsoft stated.