Companies 'Blah' About Vista

PreacherTom writes "Those who expected the initial Vista release to generate a wave of hype will be sorely disappointed. While Vista is now available for companies, they do not really appear to care. The situation is the same with Office 2007. Why? Several reasons, not the least of which is expected difficulty in adaptation to the new features." From the article: "Office has an entirely new look and new formats for saving files in Word and Excel. Slick as it is, the new look will take some training to master. And the new file formats, which will be easier to use with high-end corporate programs such as those that run servers, mean users on older versions of Office will have to download a program to open documents and spreadsheets sent with the new technology. 'This thing is not going to be all that easy to roll out,' says Michael Silver, research vice-president at Gartner."

Comments

a new car!

[yagu]

Wait, software doesn't wear out, at least not like cars do. This is where Microsoft has to re-figure the business model. Their products (OS, Office suite, etc.) are so mature people and companies actually have to rationalize moving to the new plan. In the old days migration paths often followed needs -- today most needs are fulfilled. How many thousands of fonts could one possibly want in their documents?

It's time to think about service. It's time to think about customers. It's time to think about humility. Microsoft, other than their monopoly, no longer has a hammer to coerce the public into the new products -- though that's probably enough.

Meanwhile, with all of this talk of a long adoption window, wouldn't this be one of the most opportune times for things Linux to gain purchase (how ironic for a free product)? As companies look at budgets and costs, couldn't Linux now get it's foot in the door? I hope so...

(Note: from the mysterious slashdot future, how ironic -- an article about Microsoft dissing Open Source as insecure because people can look at the code! Looks like Microsoft is hard at work ensuring a glance at Linux and other Open Source software is at least uncomfortable.)

Re:a new car!

[LWATCDR]

Microsoft is going to "force" the software to wear out.
New file formats are a good way to start.
Not selling the old software.
OEM bundles where the OS and applications are only to be used on that one machine. Get a new computer and pay for a new OS.
I hope that OO.org instead focuses on making the software easier, smaller, faster, and more reliable.

Re:a new car!

[traabil]

Meanwhile, with all of this talk of a long adoption window, wouldn't this be one of the most opportune times for things Linux to gain purchase (how ironic for a free product)? As companies look at budgets and costs, couldn't Linux now get it's foot in the door? I hope so...

If there's no compelling event to swap a perfectly working (sic) XP for Vista, why would one consider moving to Linux? Surely, the migration cost in terms of training need would be even higher for such a move.

Re:a new car!

[diersing]

True. I also wonder if training is really that big a hurdle anymore. As the general public (and especially long term business users) get more tech savvy can't we expect the average user to just need a couple hours of play time to re-learn where the core functionality is? Everything the average user needs is in the ribbons of Office07, its just a matter of learning their arrangement.

Even greater reason to push home users towards Google's Docs & Spreadsheets, but the business users everyone is concerned about aren't mindless cattle anymore. Lets give them credit. Office 2003 & 2007 can be installed in parallel, let them play with it and call it pilot testing.

Re:a new car!

[COMON$]

For our office we are still mainly a Win 2000 server domain. Just now moving to 2003 through attrition. Ya there are perks to moving to the next server/office level but are they worth the cost? Will our office use them? Heck most of our users cant distinguish between word and wordpad. Most users just want to be able to type a report on letterhead, use italics and bold here and there and that is it.

Unless security is an issue, I really see no need to over complicate something with more features when what we have does just fine. You have to show me a product that is major like jumping from NTSP6 to win2K/XP. Where my current OS can handle all the devices I have just fine, my current office product (2003) works above and beyond our needs, I dont need to upgrade until I see an end of life on the product.

With few exceptions I think most seasoned Windows administrators would agree.

Re:a new car!

[steelfood]

I disagree. While back then, with no viable competitor, new file formats would justify an upgrade. If clients were sending you office 2003 file but you're running office 97, you're definitely going to want to move to office 2003. However, in this day and age, office is no longer the monopoly it once was. There are three factors hindering the office 2003 to office 2007 transition, and they've largely been covered by other posters here.

To reiterate, first is the completely redesigned interface, and the need for retraining. This will make companies, large and small, reluctant to upgrade. They'll hold off as long as possible. Remember, people in managerial positions and their assistants use office. And for most of these people, who have trouble with technology as it is and who'd spent the better part of the past 10-15 years getting used to office since the days of 5.0, retraining is going to be a very painful process. Add to the fact that they're the decision makers, and you've got even less chance of companies moving to office 2007.

The second is the presence of a half-decent competitor: open office. So what if microsoft stops selling office 2003? Suddenly, open office, with its familiar interface and remarkably similar feature set is going to look very lucrative. And add to the fact that it's free, and there's even greater incentive to move to it if microsoft is foolish enough to stop selling office 2003 outright. Sure, it's not as polished as office 2003. But as long as it can read and write those files, it'll do. New file formats force upgrades only when there's nothing decent available to read and process the old one. Open office isn't stunning, but it'll do for the most part.

The final, and most important factor is the same one that plagued Intel and AMD a few years back. Office 2003 is good enough. Sure, it might be lacking in a few areas compared to office 2007. But people have found ways around those shortcomings already, and having spent many years improving those workarounds, they're pretty efficient by now. Why upgrade to 2007 when the feature set of 2003 is sufficient?

And these are the same reasons people won't upgrade to vista. Sure, vista might be more secure. And at home, it'll find wide adoption because of its OEM bundling. But in the corporate world, people know that an upgrade will cost money. How much depends on the company, but if it's on par or more than the existing security budget for the current windows xp setup, there's no reason to upgrade. And by the time xp goes into extended support, well, there's still a couple of years, and like office, there's an alternative that's gaining popularity. So by the time businesses get around to deploying office 2007 and vista, they might just go, screw it, and start deploying linux instead.

More likely, anything that isn't backwards compatible will hinder the transition rather than help it. The reason why people moved to XP? Because it worked well with 2k. And it had a set of features 2k didn't have that was actually useful. Vista actually was supposed to have some of those nifty features that would encourage people to upgrade. But over the course of its development, they all were eventually canned--put off indefinitely or until a later upgrade pack.

Re:Why should businesses care anyways?

[stokessd]

The business arguement is that sooner or later every new machine that comes through the door will have vista on it. So we will have it, it's just a matter of when and how best to deal with it.

Sheldon

If it works, don't fix it.

[erbbysam]

If it works, don't fix it.

Yeah right...

[zappepcs]

Even if I liked MS products, and I'm not saying they suck, I still wouldn't entertain the thought of an upgrade project at this time of year. With support being taxed as it is due to holidays, and training not able to fully support an enterprise wide roll-out, it is just stupid to think companies will gleefully jump on the Vista bandwagon and roll out the shiny new MS products.

People debate the cost of rolling out OSS products for these very reasons, and MS lackeys have touted how a MS upgrade costs less in support and training for the upgrade. The simple truth: The upgrade roll-out costs are near the same when there are feature and function changes. Companies also have to think of the COST of new licenses on top of generic roll-out problems and costs. Its just not a good time of year for such activity. I think it was a poor choice of times to launch?

Re:Why should businesses care anyways?

[diersing]

In small shops maybe, but most mid-size companies and up deploy a managed desktop image (in most cases the manufacturer pre-loads it when the machine is ordered).

Incompatibity to force upgrades strikes again

[Whammy666]

Yet again M$ is releasing another upgrade with incompatible file formats to earlier versions of office tools with the expectations that millions of users will be forced to pay yet another M$ tax to exchange documents with fellow business associates. I'm so glad we've converted over to OpenOffice.

I can see no good reason to migrate to Vista, and the compatibility and re-training issues are strong reasons not to. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Re:Only gamers will care about Vista

[Whammy666]

Vista may not be an asset to gamers. DX10 doesn't really add any new features to the graphics capability of a system since that is largely dependent on hardware. Developers may like the newer DX10 interface, but there are severe backward compatibility issues for users. Any game which depends on DX10 will not run on XP or W2K platforms. I can't see developers embracing DX10/Vista for fear of excluding a large portion of the gaming market.

Yawn

[Mr_Silver]

Don't gforget that:

• Companies were "blah" about Windows XP
• Companies were "blah" about Office 2003
• Companies were "blah" about Windows 2000
• Companies were "blah" about Office 2002
• Companies were "blah" about Office 2000

Companies are blah about replacements to pretty much anything that already works and already does the job well enough. Eventually they'll shift, but only when all their hardware has broken down and been replaced by stuff that can run it, the current operating system of choice is no longer supported and they have major applications that won't run in that aforementioned operating system.

This is hardly new, they have been working this way for years and I fully expect them to be "blah" about the next version of Office and Windows as well.

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