The Redmond Company plans to deploy Windows Vista on approximately 20% of enterprise desktops within just the first year. Back in September, Microsoft has commissioned a study to IDC for the European market. According to IDC, Windows Vista will generate a total revenue of 32 billion euros in Denmark, France, Germany, Poland, Spain and the UK, create in excess of 50,000 jobs and bring benefits to another million jobs. IDC additionally forecasted that Vista will be deployed onto over 30 million machines in the six European countries mentioned above.

Forrester Research, an independent technology and market research company, has made public the "State of Enterprise Infrastructure 2006" study in which it claims that more than half of the European businesses will ignore Vista in the first two years since the operating system's launching. In fact, with just 6% of European businesses planning to upgrade to Windows Vista in the first six months since the product's release and with a total of 18% deployment within the first year, Vista's deployment in Europe will lag behind the US.

"This is behind the anticipated rate of adoption in North America, reflecting greater resistance to the Microsoft product strategy from users in the European market," stated the report.

Out of the total of 302 IT chiefs at European businesses surveyed by Forrester Research, 55% revealed that they have no plan whatsoever to upgrade to Windows Vista. Another 20% scheduled a two year waiting period before upgrading to Vista.