In a survey performed by systems management consulting group ScriptLogic, 60 percent of companies said they have no plans (at least for the next few years) to install Microsoft's upcoming and highly-anticipated Windows 7.
That's terrible news for Microsoft, which is still reeling from the dead-on-arrival Windows Vista and a general economic slump that caused the company to undergo its first ever layoffs earlier this year.
The survey polled 1,000-plus companies about their plans for the upgrade, which arrives in October, and found awfully sketchy support. Only 5.4 percent of those surveyed, for example, say they plan to upgrade by the end of 2009.
Why aren't companies rushing to Windows 7? Largely it comes down to money and the lack of employee talent and resources required to get such an upgrade rolled out. 42 percent cited these reasons for postponing or skipping Win 7 altogether.
Compatibility is another big issue for IT staffers, with 39 percent saying they're concerned that existing applications won't run on the new OS. (Though, truth be told, Microsoft is attempting to take great pains to make sure this isn't the case.)
All of this begs the question: If they're skipping Windows 7, what are these companies going to run instead? Vista has made only minimal inroads in corporate computing environments, so the venerable Windows XP is what Win 7-skippers are the most likely to continue to use. But obtaining new Windows XP licenses is getting increasingly difficult.
A bigger problem: Finding future hardware that is compatible with Windows XP, as many manufacturers already offer only a small set of computers for which XP drivers are available, a pool which is sure to continue to shrink over time. It's all part of the computer industry's game of goading you into upgrading eventually -- whether you want to or not -- and for companies that have already skipped Vista, that's a game that will increasingly end up in Microsoft's favor.
0 comments:
Post a Comment