Windows Vista migration

Migrating to Vista…or Windows 7?

I’m a long-time fan of Microsoft watcher Mary-Jo Foley’s blog on ZDnet entitled “All about Microsoft.” It’s usually informative, sometimes entertaining, and often thought-provoking, as with her recent July 23 (2009) blog The Scarlet V: What’s a Vista business user to do? The blog itself raises some interesting points, but it’s the Talkback discussion — where users share their comments, views, and rants — that really makes this particular posting so interesting.

Foley reminds us of Microsoft’s changing stance on enterprise migration to Vista, as follows (the points recounted are hers, the paraphrasing mine):

• Until recently, MS told enterprises to keep migrating to Vista if said migration was underway; otherwise enterprises should skip Vista and go straight to Windows 7
• In May (2009) MS pretty much clammed up about Vista and hasn’t said much new about migrating, pro, con, or indifferent

This led MJF to Mike Angiulo, General Manager for Microsoft’s Planning and PC Ecosystem team (man, wouldn’t you love a title like that? to whom she posed the question about whether or not MS is abandoning its Vista users. Short version of his response: 1. No we’re not. 2. Lots of good stuff for Windows 7 will also work for Vista. FWIW, Dell is also taking a similar line, and the USAF is continuing its Vista deployment, with 90,000 desktops and notebooks already deployed, but is also moving as quickly as possible to get on the Windows 7 bandwagon.

The talkback section includes 150 postings as I write this and they make for fascinating reading. The attitudes span everything from “Vista sucks” and “Microsoft is the spawn of the devil” to “Vista is rock solid, and poses no problems for my organization” with many conceivable intermediate points of view also represented. The fragmented state of the Vista user base is clearly represented, and among those actually interested in using MS operating systems, I see a trend for most enterprise users to favor a move to Windows 7 as soon as it makes sense to do so. Some enterprise users say they won’t move until SP1 comes out, while others say they’ll wait for SP2. Microsoft already knows the road to widespread adoption is long and full of potholes. Let’s just hope that Windows 7 helps to improve road conditions rather than making them worse, as was an all-too-common perception for Vista until SP1 came along.

But only time will tell. Stay tuned!

Is Vista Really the Pathway to Windows 7?

In light of my most recent blog “Who’s Using Vista?” I decided to drop in on Microsoft’s Enterprise Vista Web pages to see what they had to say on the whole “Vista now, or Windows 7 later?” discussion. Imagine my consternation and outright stupefaction when I discovered that Microsoft’s own “Windows Vista Enterprise Operating System Features” page now also sports a Windows 7 tab!

“Holy smokes,” I said to myself, “Maybe those knucklehead conspiracy theorists are right, and even Microsoft thinks Vista is in its death spiral, on its way down the drain.” Even after checking out all of their information and discussion, I’m sure some will come away from it convinced that making a direct jump from Windows XP to Windows 7 on the desktop is precisely the right thing for them to do.

I did take some comfort from this language in the first paragraph of the text on the Windows 7 tab view of the afore-cited page: “Deploying Windows Vista today is an important step on the path to get ready for Windows 7″ (emphasis Microsoft’s). And of course, Microsoft is ready with white papers and information galore to help IT professionals work on management to convince them that an investment, or at least, some investment in Windows Vista will pay off both before and after Windows 7 hits the streets.

Microsoft also drops this interesting tidbit of information about Windows 7 release dates in the very next sentence on that same page: “With availability targeted 3 years after the release of Windows Vista, customers with Software Assurance will have access to Windows 7 as soon as it’s available.” Let’s review some dates here: Windows XP made its debut in October, 2001, and Windows Vista went RTM in November 2006, and commercial on January, 30, 2007. Three years from that last date is January, 2010, and that’s apparently when Microsoft wants us to expect Windows 7 to be ready (I still keep hearing and reading about rumors that it might be done late in Q3 or some time in Q4 this year, though).

For IT operations that haven’t yet adopted Windows Vista, a time window of even twelve more months with Windows XP will be no great shakes. I think Microsoft is fighting a very tough battle to try to move its user base to Vista in the near term, when the horizon for Windows 7 is not so very far off. Given the current state of the economy, and the time, effort and expense involved in migrating systems and users from XP to Vista, I’m guessing that the 85-90% of enterprises that haven’t yet adopted Vista will be happy to wait another year to think about jumping a generation and going straight from XP to Windows 7 instead.

Even then, I think they’ll wait another year past initial release, to see how well intrepid pioneers aka “early adopters” fare with Windows 7 before making any major moves. This lets me predict an unusually heavy interest in Windows 7 betas and release candidates, and much greater enterprise interest and participation in those programs.

As for myself, I’ve already switched to Vista as the primary OS where I work. Although I sometimes long for the stability and reliability that XP cheerfully delivered in the six years I used it full-time from 2001 to 2007, I’ve learned to live with Vista and make it work for me. I can only hope it really does give a leg up into Windows 7, when that OS finally becomes a commercial reality.