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Partners seeing higher
Vista adoption rates
30 January, 2008
By Patricia Pickett
After a slow start in January 2007, Windows Vista adoption
has crept up over the past year, with smaller businesses
leading the pack, according to some Microsoft Corp. channel
partners.
Ian Pavlik, president and owner of Pavliks.com, a Barrie,
Ont.-based Microsoft partner, said Vista adoption started
off at a slow crawl, as "people were skeptical, hesitant
and felt like they didn't have time to change. But over
time they have started to realize and understand the benefits
and see tangible improvements, so they are making the decision
to adopt now."
Andy Papadopoulos, CEO of LegendCorp, another Microsoft
partner based in Toronto, saw similar trends. "Customers
may be very much looking forward to upgrading to something
new, but there have to be enough features to justify the
labour, process and expense to get there," he said.
Papadopoulos noted that the Vista adoption rate is still
not incredibly high among his customers: It's hovering around
the 10 to 15 per cent mark. However, 75 to 80 per cent do
have future migration plans. It's not because customers
don't believe in the product, but because "there are
all the people, processes, technologies and timing that
have to go with it," he said. In addition, not every
customer replaces all of its desktops every year, he said.
"They have to look at it from a cycling process."
When Vista was first launched, it was only on five per
cent of systems going out Pavlik.com's door, but the ratio
is now 40 to 50 per cent Vista versus 50 to 60 per cent
XP, said Pavlik. Larger businesses are still sticking with
XP, but "if you break down the ratio, of those systems
going out the door to smaller businesses, a far higher percentage
would be Vista," he said, adding that smaller firms
don't have the strict network images, management systems
and formal testing procedures typically found in larger
organizations.
Pavlik noted that Vista has mostly been making its way
into organizations through the natural process of hardware
upgrades, and many companies are doing that gradually, starting
with the machines that need to be upgraded the most. In
addition, Papadopoulos said he's noticed that most Vista
migrations are being done at the same time businesses are
upgrading Office, as part of a complete refresh.
Some customers have decided to hold off Vista adoption
until the release of Service Pack 1 (SP1), and in those
cases, there's not much a partner can do about it, said
Papadopoulos. "It's like the Coke versus Pepsi thing
-- I won't argue with them. Their minds are set so I'll
let them be until it's time." However, according to
Pavlik, Vista has proven itself to be more stable than initial
versions of prior OSs. In the end, the advent of SP1 will
still boost Vista adoption, but the upcoming release of
Windows Server 2008 will also play its part, Pavlik said.
Other reasons for delaying Vista adoption include issues
with legacy application support, Pavlik said. "If (that
application) is the only thing they're using on the system,
they're asking why they should switch to Vista." Other
reasons include lack of support for a specific device or
driver, Pavlik added. But Papadopoulos pointed out that
Microsoft has provided an Application Compatibility Toolkit
to make incompatible software work with the OS. If a legacy
application is holding back an organization from moving
to Vista, "why can't you run (it) under Terminal Services...or
Citrix mode?" Papadopoulos said. "There are many
ways to skin the cat."
Pavlik said he's come across the odd case where a customer
has decided to roll back to XP after using Vista. "It
hasn't happened in a while, but it did happen at the beginning,"
he admitted. However, Papadopoulos said none of his customers
have returned to XP after going down the Vista path -- and
those that have experienced trouble are the ones that have
rushed into migration without considering the prescriptive
guidance offered through Microsoft tools which alert customers
if they need a hardware upgrade or if their apps will have
problems.
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