At over one year since Windows Vista was released to manufacturing and after it shipped to businesses in November 2006, and at almost 12 months since the operating system hit the shelves, it simply cannot catch a break. The last statistics related to the market performance of the latest Windows client to come out of Redmond pointed to in excess of 88 million licenses shipped to the company's channel partners. At the same time, data published by market metrics firm Net Applications points to the fact that Vista is right on track to hit the 10% market share/100 million copies by the end of 2007. Still, with the sole exception of Microsoft, the general perception is that Vista's uptake in the corporate environment is suffering drastically.

Businesses are notably slow at adopting new technology, and as Vista requires a healthy underlying infrastructure, companies generally synchronized migration to the new software with their next hardware upgrade. At the same time, the first service pack for Vista is regarded as a sign of maturity, and there are examples of large corporations, such as Intel and Dell that have postponed jumping to Vista well after SP1. While Microsoft gave strong indications that it was in fact selling Vista in the corporate environment, independent studies come to illustrate the contrary, revealing that although the adoption of the operating system will pick up in the coming year, the rate of uptake will still be low.

"That's been a disappointment. Our customer surveys tell us customers are adopting at a slower rate than we -- or anyone else -- thought. Even those that have licenses and can move quickly are not. Our CIO has been using Vista now for a long time. His comment is that it would take three or four hours for every user to learn Vista. He thinks it will be a big investment. For end user customers, the investment is not just in teaching Vista, but in new hardware to go along with it. It will continue to be adopted, but it's a slower base than anyone thought it would be a couple years ago", revealed John Edwardson, chairman and CEO of CDW, as cited by Channel Web.

In this context, Windows Vista Service Pack 1 will be a turning point for the operating system. Microsoft has just made available a public version of Vista SP1 RC1, but has failed to deliver an accurate deadline for the delivery of the refresh. And most of all, the Redmond company has constantly downplayed the relevance of SP1, gearing users directly to Vista or to Windows Update. In this regard, Microsoft has managed to create the perception that SP1 will not turn a new page for Vista.