[20.12.2007 first posted on silicon republic]
It was supposed to be Microsoft’s latest and best operating system, rich with the promise of more productive workers, less stressed IT managers and, by extension, better performing businesses.

The reality hasn’t worked out quite like that.
One year on from its launch – accompanied by the predictable fanfare – Windows Vista is taking longer to make its mark than had been expected.
The technology research firm Gartner forecast western European businesses will have bought just 5.5 million Vista licences by the end of this year..
Even where mid-size and larger enterprises have been buying PCs with Vista already loaded, most of these machines have been subsequently downgraded to earlier versions of Windows. “Less than 5pc of new PCs are kept with Vista,” said Gartner research director, Annette Jump.
It’s a similar story locally, despite Microsoft’s dominance in the Irish market.
In its annual TeleTech survey of 250 business decision makers, the Dublin-based market analyst iReach found more than 90pc of companies last year use some version of the Windows operating system.
Of that number, a much smaller portion use or are planning to use Vista: iReach found just 9pc had a plan to install or pilot it during 2007.
Anecdotal evidence supports this. “There haven’t been the large-scale rollouts we’ve seen in the past,” said Martin Henderson, director of professional services with DSS, one of the country’s largest IT firms.
Even the large multinationals in Ireland who historically spearheaded use of such systems have been slow to move. “They would usually drive the way but there’s not been that momentum – for what reason, I’m not sure. It’s got all the things the user would like,” said Henderson.
According to Oisín Byrne , managing director of iReach, many Irish businesses don’t perceive a business value in upgrading to the operating system. “It’s nice to have but there’s nothing really compelling,” he said.
In addition, the extra computer memory and processing power needed to run Vista was also forcing many companies into delaying an upgrade.
“Hardware requirements are a significant step change ahead of where people are in terms of laptops and desktops,” said Byrne. “Businesses were looking at higher costs all round and couldn’t see the business benefit.”
Many companies have natural hardware replacement cycles that tend not to coincide with major software launches like Vista.
Moreover, Vista arrived at a time when technology is so embedded within many businesses that changing one aspect of IT can’t be done in isolation.
“It’s a more complex rollout; there’s more involved,” said Henderson. “The IT estate is much more complex. If you upgrade to Vista, what does that mean for your storage systems and how does that impact your disaster recovery strategy?”
That in turn can affect IT budgets, as a potential upgrade to Vista could turn into a more wide-ranging IT change project encompassing hardware and software.
Henderson said more Irish businesses are adopting project management principles to rolling out new technology as a result – with the added consequence that software sales cycles have lengthened.
For its part, Microsoft said it is satisfied with sales of Vista to date.
The company doesn’t break out revenue or shipments on a country-by-country basis but the operating system has shipped more than 80 million copies worldwide since launch, according to Tom Murphy, corporate affairs manager with Microsoft Ireland.
“To be honest, we’re very happy with Vista. Adoption has been in line with our expectations or maybe even better than our expectations,” he said.
“Adoption is exactly the same as for any operating system we’ve launched: first consumers, next small businesses and next mid-market or larger customers,” he says.
In line with this cycle, most big businesses have yet to make the jump, Murphy agrees. “Large companies don’t upgrade just for the hell of it. They have three- to five-year upgrade programmes and the release of a new operating system won’t have a major impact.”
Murphy says customers were showing a lot of interest in Vista, “but as part of a controlled rollout”.
He added there were compelling reasons why a business should upgrade to Vista beyond just IT performance, citing its improved search features and a new security model that makes it less vulnerable to attacks than other operating systems.
Gartner’s Annette Jump suggested first-year Vista sales have been low because of the time needed for third-party software providers to make their products compatible with Vista. “Without that, many of the enterprise or mid-size customers can’t really move to the new operating system,” she said.
Expectations may also have been falsely raised by US businesses saying they planned to upgrade quickly. The reaction was more conservative on this side of the water. “European businesses seem to be a bit more realistic in the feedback we got,” she said.
Gartner expects greater take-up next year, to more than 28 million copies sold during 2008 in western Europe. “Our expectation is, it will take the mainstream companies 12 to 18 months to upgrade to Vista, so that will take us into the middle of next year,” she said.
Vista adoption among European companies is not predicted to reach a peak until 2010 at 75 million units, Gartner’s research found.
iReach also expects better adoption by this time next year. “When we looked at this mid-year, we did see growth to 15pc of organisations considering testing or installing Vista within the next 12 months,” said Byrne..
Irish businesses have historically tended not to be early adopters of technology. “A lot of people don’t like to be the first to jump in and get all the teething problems,” said Martin Henderson.
In Vista’s case it may be a sign of pragmatism rather than an unwillingness to try new things.
“I don’t know if it’s ‘wait and see’. A lot of people have been burned by technology vendors overselling the next big thing. People are more aware of the hype,” said Byrne.
“The message we get is, people are focused on running their business and don’t want to be technology specialists. We see the same thing with internet telephony, so it’s not just Vista. There has to be a really good business case to do these things; it’s not just technology for technology’s sake.”
Security and compliance are top Vista virtues
Most Irish businesses seem to be thinking twice about Vista but some have forged ahead and are claiming positive results. Aughinish Alumina is Europe’s largest producer of alumina and has 320 PCs at its Limerick plant..
“One of the major reasons why we picked Vista was the security and compliance with internal corporate IT policies,” said Justus de Hooge, IS and IT manager for Aughinish Alumina.
De Hooge said he now needs to apply far fewer security software patches than he did with Vista’s predecessor Windows XP. He can also manage Vista more easily without needing additional and complex software tools.
Aughinish Alumina rolled out Vista on a phased basis, starting with the five-man IT department for a six-week period followed by a control group of 12 users for a further month. All other PCs have since been upgraded.
Through the combination of Office 2007 and Vista, PCs users at the plant are much more productive, de Hooge claimed. “We’re rolling out Office 2007 at the same time so there’s the argument of ‘better together’,” he said. “Between Office 2007 and Vista, the users are very happy. From the IT point of view, I have much more control.”
What undoubtedly helped speed Vista’s way was the company culture of adopting new technology quickly throughout the business in order to reap benefits such as improved productivity, de Hooge added.
“We have an ethos of continuous improvement in the plant. The production people aren’t afraid of change; they’re willing to invest in technology and they see the benefit of it,” he said.
By Gordon Smith