Company News: Businesses may be slow to embrace Vista

After five years of development and repeated delays, Microsoft is releasing its Windows Vista operating system for sale to corporate customers Thursday.

But don’t expect drumrolls in the world of corporate computing, where technology managers are notoriously slow in upgrading their systems. Most businesses will proceed cautiously in testing and evaluating Microsoft’s new flagship operating system, leading to a phase-in of Vista over one to two years, analysts and information technology managers say.

That’s a different scenario from the one predicted for Vista’s consumer release on Jan. 30, which analysts say will spark a surge in purchases of Vista-equipped home computers. Businesses have more complex computing needs — and usually feel a need to justify upgrades.

“There isn’t any single thing that’s so compelling that the majority of users say I have to get on this right away,” said Steve Kleynhans, vice president for client platforms at Gartner.

Instead, he added, Vista offers a variety of smaller features that make it attractive, such as improvements in security and reliability and the addition of a desktop search function. While businesses will welcome these enhancements, Kleynhans said, there is little pent-up demand to replace Vista’s predecessor, Windows XP, because it runs well and most of its bugs have been identified and resolved.

But eventually, companies will want a newer operating system, Kleynhans said, and will feel comfortable rolling out Vista in about 15 to 18 months — relatively fast for the adoption of an operating system.

Brad Goldberg, Microsoft’s general manager of Windows product management, agreed businesses would roll out Vista gradually but predicted it would be adopted faster than any other business operating system.

“There is no need to wait,” he said. “The sooner companies start deploying the product, the sooner they reap the benefits around productivity, security and cost savings.”

In the past, fewer than 5 percent of businesses adopted Microsoft’s operating systems within a year or two of their release, even as limited pilot projects, Goldberg said. But Microsoft learned from feedback on earlier Windows releases and is making Vista easier to deploy and less expensive to manage, he added.

In particular, Goldberg predicted technology managers would be drawn to Vista because it might help them better manage and protect an increasing amount of data.