Just in case you have failed to tune in after Microsoft released Windows Vista SP1 to manufacturing on February 4, 2008, and to the general public on March 18, the latest Windows client is now ready for adoption. Yes, indeed it took the Redmond company approximately a year and a half after the release of Vista RTM to get at a mature sufficient stage so that the operating system is the best Windows available for business customers and home users looking to upgrade from previous versions of the Microsoft proprietary platform. Service Pack 1 releases have traditionally been regarded as a green light for uptake, especially in corporate environments, and Microsoft has just the example to prove that the same is valid for Vista SP1.

Rodney Buike, IT Pro Advisor on the Developer and Platform Evangelism team at Microsoft Canada put together the video embedded at the bottom of this article, focusing on a massive 12,000 computers migration to Windows Vista SP1. The resource comes to add as much weight as possible behind the Redmond company's new initiative for corporate environments to prove that Vista SP1 is ready for deployment. In this regard, Microsoft's message is simple, urging customers that have said pass to Vista RTM to take another look at Vista SP1.

"Jean-Philippe Breton is the Lead Deployment Manager for Alphamosaik, a Microsoft Gold Certified partner located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He and his team recently lead a 10,000 seat deployment of Vista with SP1 for a major Canadian transportation company with offices around the globe. I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Jean-Philippe about how tools like the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit simplified the deployment and some things learned along the way(sic)," revealed Buike.

Alphamosaik has been struggling with the generalized problems of Vista RTM including application incompatibility, lack of drivers support and Microsoft having failed to convince end users of the true value of Windows Vista. But Breton states in the video that SP1 indeed solved some of the most stringent issues associated with the RTM build, from application support to drivers and performance. Still, Vista does have its undeniable advantages over XP. And from the perspective of corporations, the deployment infrastructure of the operating system and the collection of tools offered to streamline the installation/migration/upgrade processes have been nothing short of successes for Microsoft.


Jean-Philippe on Vista deployment