A new survey shows Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system is still playing second fiddle to XP with business users, with more enterprises confessing to checking out the unreleased Windows 7 OS than its predecessor.
More than half (58 per cent) of businesses using Microsoft technology are "exploiting" Windows XP compared to just four per cent for Vista, according to the 'reality checkers' research by the Corporate IT Forum (Tif), seen exclusively by ZDNet.com.au sister site silicon.com.
Tif's corporate IT reality checkers survey helps its members quickly compare the progress and position of their companies' IT against the technology choices of other members.
Tif also found that 35 per cent of organisations describe themselves as "not yet interested" in Vista.
The OS most people appear to be developing or piloting is XP, with 12 per cent of businesses saying they were doing so compared to five per cent for Vista. Interestingly more businesses said they're currently investigating or analysing Microsoft's next scheduled OS, Windows 7 (30 per cent), than Vista (14 per cent).
In contrast, seven per cent of businesses even said they're still exploiting Windows 2000 although 19 per cent said they are currently replacing or "sunsetting" it.
Back in April, research showed Vista uptake among businesses was slow during 2007, although a quarter of businesses said they planned to upgrade in 2008. The main reason given by Tif members for not moving to Vista was a lack of business requirement to do so.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's latest browser, Internet Explorer 7 is having a similar battle with its predecessor IE6, with a fifth of respondents saying they're not yet interested in the newer version of the app.
Almost two-thirds of businesses surveyed (65 per cent) said they were exploiting IE6 compared to four per cent for IE7. However, 14 per cent said they were currently piloting IE7 with the same proportion using it in isolation.
Almost a quarter (23 per cent) said they were analysing and investigating IE8 which is currently available in beta form.
The less popular a M$ product is, the cheaper it becomes (ie M$ buys market share). I'm expecting Vista to get into negative pricing quite soon. A little over a year ago it was priced at near A$1,000/copy and now it is bundled (in contravention of The Trade Practices Act) with almost all new brand-name hardware. Ask how much you'll save to 'unbundle it' and you'll most likely be told 'zero'. The 'negative price' will be achieved when you start getting coupons and discounts for other things thrown in as well!
The primary reason it is being given away (like the browser wars) is because M$ is so afraid of easy-to-install-and-use Linux varieties like Ubuntu. [See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_Documents for background.]
After this vigorous 'give-away campaign', I'm sure we'll see some figures from M$ claiming Vista has X million users (so it can't be bad, can it?). Of greater interest would be the stat M$ execs probably look at each month - the percentage of Vista licences supplied into the marketplace which are no longer performing online update checks (ie the proportion who kept with XP, downgraded to XP or have switched to Linux).
But corporate use is the tail-end of the game. Corporates go with what users are familiar with. The real battle will be over school OS use. I think Ubuntu is now far more secure, stable, less-viral, easy-to-use and has far lower total cost of ownership than any proprietary OS. And interestingly, it may take the success of the One-Laptop-Per-Child project in Africa to confirm to OECD-country education departments that Ubuntu is the 'free/open' way to go. Then we'd see an interesting phenomenon where the first-world will learn IT lessons from the third-world. I'm still laughing from hearing the NSW Education Dept's claim that it can't/won't accept the free computer for each high school student from the Rudd Federal Government on the grounds that the software and support costs will cripple the education budget. Someone should show the minister how a cloned Ubuntu drive can be copied in just minutes (as no separate licensing muck-around per PC) and how a user logged in as 'Guest' can do all manner of browsing but not EVER cause a stuff-up on the system, irrespective of what malware sites are visited.
WinXP never asked if you objected to the storage of a executable file in the program area of the system; Vista asks all the time, to the point where people disable the feature; Linux asks only once per 3-10 days when there are real program updates available, but then prevents you from by-passing this important security feature.
Graeme Harrison (prof at-symbol post.harvard.edu)