As window closes on Vista, Microsoft makes last-ditch corporate push

Computerworld - Microsoft Corp. today put forth its best case as to why corporations and large organizations should consider upgrading to the Windows Vista operating system, even as its successor Windows 7, looms.

In an interview, Gavriella Schuster, a senior director in the company's Windows product management group, urged businesses to move to the embattled operating system now, even if they plan to move to Windows 7 after it ships, as is widely rumored, later this year.

"If you're running Windows 2000, you should definitely move to Vista today," Schuster said. At more than seven years old, she described Windows XP as being on "life support" because of Microsoft's plan to cut mainstream support in two months. Schuster said users should consider "how much money am I spending keeping XP alive, versus moving on?" Microsoft also debuted a new blog called Windows for Your Business to market Vista to its corporate customers.

She urged companies to check when their vendors plan to pull support for their applications on Windows XP and to start testing the Windows 7 beta today.

Windows 7's arrival by this year's holiday season could boost sales of PCs to consumers. But an earlier arrival, combined with the economic downturn, could hurt Vista's remaining chances with Microsoft's most profitable customer segment -- businesses and large organizations.

Vista has been available to corporations for 27 months. Larger corporations may take that long to test, prepare and deploy a major operating system upgrade such as Vista because of the extensive application-compatibility testing and employee retraining that are required.

Many corporate Windows users already have the rights to upgrade to Vista at any time because of the multiyear Enterprise licenses and Software Assurance upgrade rights they buy. Many are resisting the move, though.

For example, the government of Fulton County, Ga., is a Microsoft enterprise customer and tested the beta of Windows Vista three years ago as part of Microsoft's Technology Adoption Program (TAP). The county's IT officials came away so impressed that they initially planned to roll out Vista in all 6,000 of its PCs by the end of 2007, or a year after its release.

Fast-forward to early 2009, and Vista is running on only a small slice of Fulton County's computers. The county has put off PC upgrades because budget cuts forced by reduced property tax revenue as a result of real estate downturn in Atlanta and surrounding suburbs. That has left many employees using PCs that are five or six years old and running XP.

"We're stuck, and it's no fault of Vista," said Jay Terrell, deputy director of IT for the county government. "We're going to wait for Windows 7, though it's not because we [want to] wait."