14 DAY TRIAL // No less than 66% of companies plan to upgrade to Windows 7, albeit later rather than sooner, according to an October 2009 survey from Forrester Research, titled Windows 7 Commercial Adoption Outlook. But the latest Windows client from Microsoft is already the fastest selling operating system in history, having already sold in excess of 90 million copies in the first four months since launch. In this regard, Forrester Research has put together a new whitepaper designed to offer general guidance to adopters of Windows Vista’s successor. “Lessons Learned from Windows 7 Early Adopters” is available as a PDF via this link.
“Forrester’s report asked 40 early Windows 7 adopters about their experiences to help IT managers develop their Windows 7 migration strategies. Overall, they found Windows 7 to be a ‘solid release,’ with IT managers all over the world saying the benefits they’re seeing with productivity, security, management and green IT costs are well worth the effort. Customers are experiencing faster startup and shutdown times, more reliable sleep mode and overall stability of the OS, faster access to data and applications through improved search, and a superior mobile and branch office connectivity experience,” Gavriella Schuster, senior director, Product Management for Windows Client, revealed.
Windows 7 is in a different league compared with its predecessor, in the sense that it doesn’t actually feel like a traditional RTM version, but rather as a fine-tuned OS after the implementation of Service Pack 1. Unlike Vista, Windows 7 got only rave reviews, and the initial success on the market is a testament to the fact that incompatibility, reliability, stability, support and performance problems are only exceptions, and those far and infrequent.
Still, companies that plan on migrating their infrastructure to Windows 7 still need to prepare extensively for the operating system. For them, Forrester Research offers the “Lessons Learned from Windows 7 Early Adopters” whitepaper, which points out the main points of focus including piloting the OS for application compatibility problems. In addition, Forrester recommends that business customers upgrade to Windows 7 simultaneously with a hardware upgrade across their environment. According to the market research firm, a client management solution is a must-have detail, which will simplify the work of IT admins, but that won’t make user training unnecessary. In addition, Forrester advises that companies consider client virtualization scenarios in order to accelerate Windows 7 deployment.
Microsoft Windows 7 90-Day Eval VHD is available for download here.
Another Windows 7 RTM Enterprise 90-Day Evaluation is available for download here.