14 DAY TRIAL // The five-year gap that separates the Windows XP launch at the end of 2001, from the availability of Windows Vista for businesses in November 2006 and for general consumers in January 2007, is equivalent, at least in Microsoft's perspective with the fertile soil that would integrate its latest Windows client. Following Vista's first year since the operating system was released to manufacturing, the Redmond company applauded selling over 88 million copies of Vista worldwide. The figure is of course a representation of the entire volume of Vista copies shipped to the company's channel partners and not to actual customers.
And when it comes down to the tools available and designed to streamline the migration and upgrading process to Vista, Microsoft has neglected little. The Microsoft Deployment Solution Accelerator (formerly Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) 2007) is a collection of both guidance and tools that enable the deployment of Windows Vista and the Office 2007 System. The Redmond company is offering Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) 5.0, Windows Vista Hardware Assessment (WVHA) 2.1 solution accelerator and Microsoft User State Migration Tools (USMT) 3.0 as a part of Microsoft Deployment.
"Downloads of the current tools suggest that customers and partners are using them to help with their deployment needs, and that more and more businesses are preparing to move to Windows Vista. For example, the WVHA tool has been downloaded 329,000 times during the last eight months, BDD 2007 has been downloaded 283,000 times, and ACT 5.0 has been downloaded more than 340,000 times since February", the company revealed.
"With more and more businesses looking to deploy Windows Vista, we wanted to remind IT Pros that we offer tools to help accelerate the testing and planning for the migration. We recently announced Microsoft Deployment, the next version of what was formally known as Business Desktop Deployment (BDD), and today we're announcing updates to several Windows Vista deployment planning tools to aid the deployment process", stated Nick White, Microsoft Product Manager.
And yet a recent survey put together by Forrester Research indicates only a third of the businesses plan to debut Windows Vista deployments in the coming year. But this is actually nothing but good news for Microsoft, as Vista adoption in the corporate environment has been limping throughout 2007. One thing is certain though - Microsoft has provided a comprehensive set of offerings positioned to catalyze the uptake of Vista into every environment. And the company will even go over the top with the availability of Vista SP1 in the first quarter of 2008.