Most businesses plan to skip Windows 7
By Mike Ferro
Windows Vista has become a sore point for Microsoft as many consumers and businesses have opted to skip over the this version of Windows. Many had indicated plans to skip Vista in favor of the next version of Windows, Windows 7. However, according to a recent survey it seems that businesses may be thinking about skipping Windows 7 as well.
According to CNET, a survey was recently conducted by Quest Software in order to assess whether or not most companies would upgrade to Windows 7. The survey was conducted using a pool of 20,000 IT administrators. Out of that pool, around 1,000 actually completed the survey.
The results were shocking with about 60 percent of the respondents indicating no current plans to adopt Windows 7. A little over a third of the respondents did indicate plans to migrate to Windows 7 by the end of 2010, while only 5.4 percent indicated plans to move sometime this year.
According to the survey, the top two reasons given for not migrating seems to stem from saving cost and time. The state of the economy certainty is playing a huge role in how IT shops are managing budget today. However, Microsoft isn’t making it easier for many to upgrade by creating some confusion in the marketplace.
Just last year, Microsoft was pushing businesses to upgrade to Vista indicating that it will help with future migration plans by saving hardware costs. However, Microsoft is now telling customers using XP that they can migrate directly to Windows 7 without investing heavily in hardware.
As I wrote yesterday, Microsoft is attempting to change its Windows strategy to better deal with the evolving OS market and new competition such as Google entering the OS business. Microsoft may need to come up with a better strategy for Windows 7 if the company wants to avoid the same situation with Vista.
Related:
Entry was posted
on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 4:41 am
under
Read more entries by Mike Ferro.
Stumble It!
July 13th, 2009
Nothing to see here, move along.
Businesses don’t ever adopt a new version of Windows when it first comes out. It’s better to let the bugs shake out, test for compatibility etc…
Stop with the Chrome hype already, at least until it’s out. There are pretty significant issues with a web based OS if you’re a business.
7 will be successful for Microsoft. Millions are running 7RC and they don’t seem to be upset
or complaining.
20,000 surveyed and 1,000 respondents on an OS that hasn’t been released is probably not a very good basis for projecting trends.
Cnet link: http://tinyurl.com/lvouw7
The division of the company responsible for the survey is ScriptLogic.
Here is the link to their page about the survey:
http://tinyurl.com/l4p9j3
and the actual survey in PDF :
http://tinyurl.com/n8uhbo
The people who did the survey have a very different conclusion from yours:
“In this survey, we found that despite the fact that the short-term migration plans of administrators (in the next 12 months) have been impacted by the economy, 41% of organizations plan to migrate by the end of 2010. The 41% adoption rate is actually a very strong adoption rate (as a point of reference, the historical adoption rate of Windows XP in its first year was cited as 12-14%), and we’re excited to be working with our customers to help then with this move.”
Yet if you Google the survey, all manner of blog sites are tossing out the same nonsense as Mr. Ferro, which is incorrect according to people who did it.
Furnishing links to the sites you quoted and looking at original material are central and basic journalism. This is the kind of stuff that people mean with the “42 year old man in his mothers basement” cracks. Sad.
July 13th, 2009
The whole argument is kinda moot anyway. windows 7 has a XP compatibility mode which MSFT wisely incorporated in Windows 7. (Really, they DID learn from the Vista fiasco)
Besides Microsoft makes money off major companies regardless if they are running Windows 95 or Windows 7. They have site/volume licenses that cover the whole company, MSFT makes money off of each computer no matter what version of Windows the company runs.
The only companies that will not upgrade to Windows 7 are those who don’t have site/volume licenses and need to buy new computers or substantially upgrade their computers to run Windows 7.
I am talking about those computers which run XP marginally right now…like those at my work with 128 MB ram and a paltry 1.2 Ghz speed. Ever try doing a PDF and a Word file at the same time with 128 MB ram…? lol