Gartner Tells Businesses to Forget About Vista

Barence writes "IT analyst firm Gartner has told businesses to skip Vista and prepare to roll out Windows 7. Companies have traditionally been advised to wait until the first Service Pack of an operating system arrives before considering migration. However, Gartner is urging organisations that aren't already midway through Vista deployments to give the much-maligned operating system a miss. 'Preparing for Vista will require the same amount of effort as preparing for Windows 7, so at this point, targeting Windows 7 would add less than six months to the schedule and would result in a plan that is more politically palatable, better for users, and results in greater longevity.' Even businesses that are midway through planning a Vista migration are urged to consider scrapping the deployment. 'Consider switching to Windows 7 if it would delay deployment by six months or less.'"

Comments

Insightful analysis... four years late.

[symbolset]

What Gartner is for is to tell us what Microsoft wants us to do.

What insightful, cutting edge analysis this would have been... four years ago.

The Gartner experts say all companies should move off Windows XP by the end of 2012 to avoid problems with application compatibility.

I agree with this part... but do not agree about what companies should move to. It's time to get off the train to crazytown.

Re:Insightful analysis... four years late.

[Savage-Rabbit]

With Microsoft shooting themselves in the foot with Vista, the big question is how many feet they have. If the answer is "two", then windows 7 is their last bullet.

Microsoft shot itself in the foot at some point with Windows 3.x, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, various iterations of Windows XP, Windows Vista... the list goes on and those are only their operating system FUBARs. My personal Microsoft Office FUBAR list starts at the "red crosses of death" that fucked up one of my first project reports almost two decades ago and goes on from there. You can probably find a longer list than mine. The only thing that differed from shot to shot was the caliber of bullet they used which so far has been anything from a 22 cal to a 20mm explosive shell. Most other companies in the software business can only afford a limited number of foot-shots before they go bankrupt. Microsoft's saving grace is not an infinite supply of feet but rather a cash money powered ability to heal from shooting them selves in the foot with amazing speed.

Re:Insightful analysis... four years late.

[adolf]

What's 1GB of RAM these days? $12? Sheesh.

Vista has far cheaper memory requirements than any other released version of desktop Windows, to date.

Re:Insightful analysis... four years late.

[Darkness404]

But the question is why? I can get a Ubuntu system to do far more than a Vista system on 512 MB of RAM. I can have more impressive 3-D effects with less RAM without slowdowns. No system should really require more than 512 MB of RAM. Sure, everyone should really have a gig or two of it because its dirt cheap today, but an OS should have a minimal footprint.

If you can't have a fast system with 512 MB of RAM you are doing something wrong.

Re:Insightful analysis... four years late.

[samriel]

Put OS X on PC hardware and Apple will be the next king of silicon valley.

Yes, they would win on the software side. However, if you can put OSX on PC hardware, then you have no incentive to buy Apple's own hardware. This knocks the legs out from under Apple, and they have a net loss from this move. They haven't done it yet for good reason.

Re:Insightful analysis... four years late.

[bonch]

I don't think Apple is interested in the netbook market because they consider the iPhone to be their portable computer.

Re:Insightful analysis... four years late.

[capnkr]

{snip}...certainly will happen when Win7 fails.

One way for Microsoft to make it a Sure Thing: instead of having proper security be a simple 'best practice', continue to have it be simply The Most Expensive Option.

FTFA -

"AppLocker, meanwhile, gives companies granular control over the applications - right down to the version number - that employees can install on their office machines.
"Both of these will require Windows 7 Enterprise Edition, available only to organisations with Software Assurance, or Windows 7 Ultimate," the Gartner analysts warn."

Foot, meet bullet.

This is not just something for corporate use. I have plenty of clients who would be glad to benefit from letting me use this tool on their systems (and boy would it make my job easier...). Parents could use it for the kids, geeks could use it on the systems they invariably get asked to fix for a buddy, etc... MS keeps getting their asses handed to them on the issue of basic security. When are they going to finally learn that they *need* to implement/make available good security across _all levels_ of their OS? The totally free software that I use has a bare fraction of both the potential and the real-world security problems MS OS'es have.

So why does MS continue to act as if charging for security is a Good Thing, when it can so easily be had for free?
And why don't more "expert tech analysts" call them out on this?

Yeah, yeah - I know...

Re:Insightful analysis... four years late.

[ozmanjusri]

So why does MS continue to act as if charging for security is a Good Thing, when it can so easily be had for free?

Microsoft has a delicate balancing act to manage.

There's a massive industry that's emerged to work around Windows' security deficiencies. Companies that collect malware in honeypots. Companies that generate malware signatures. Companies that write antivirus software. Companies that train users how to avoid Windows pitfalls. Businesses to monitor networks for intrusions. Businesses to repair or reinstall failed Windows machines. Security researchers, patch writers, forensic specialists... and so on, ad nauseum.

There are millions of people kept in continuous employment just to protect and maintain Microsoft's OS, many of them the "expert tech analysts" you're asking to call Microsoft out. Unsurprisingly, those people are often Microsoft's most energetic supporters.

Microsoft does not want to alienate their most ardent fans.

Re:Insightful analysis... four years late.

[Spasemunki]

The stock price will likely not reach those heights again not because Microsoft is fundamentally in trouble, but because the market primarily values growth. Microsoft already owns a piece of damn near every computer in the world, so there's really nowhere to go but down; their non-core offerings have, at best, a checkered history and don't inspire confidence in investors.

MS has been transitioning out of the 'growth' mold in the assessment of stock pickers for years. That's why the price is down, and is staying down. Paying out dividends is not a ploy to buoy the stock price, as the stock is already training at a premium way above the dividend value; paying dividends is just what a reasonable Board does in response to a huge excess of cash that can't be reasonably invested in growth. They're a publicly traded company and have to act in the interest of the shareholder.

As to their revenues... they took modest losses in one of the worst economies since the Depression, during a period when their last major product release is several years in the mirror, and people are holding out on major purchases as the next one comes into view. That's a pretty enviable position to most companies.

Re:Insightful analysis... four years late.

[Anonymous Coward]

1984 called, it wants its bouncing checkered ball while formatting an 880k floppy back.

Amigas had their time, but so did the Model T.

Re:Insightful analysis... four years late.

[Rakshasa Taisab]

So we should insert empty loops in code just cause CPU cycles have never been cheaper?

Re:Insightful analysis... four years late.

[DDLKermit007]

You don't know anything about drivers do you? So what if Apple opened up their OS tomorrow to ALL shitty hardware on the market they would fail. OSX is a solid little thing because Apple tests the hell out of hardware in their machines. So much of MS's time is spent making sure every cheap POS PCI card you drop into your system works halfway. Apple would go from making something elegant, and functional to damage control overnight just like MS.

Re:Insightful analysis... four years late.

[thsths]

> What's 1GB of RAM these days? $12?

Talking standard DDR2, yes. But what about DDR1, or DDR3?

Next issue: the 3GB limit. If Windows uses 1 now, that only leaves 2 for the applications. If you were using 2 GB before, you would install 4 GB, and lose another GB because of the limit.

Corporations want to use older PCs, too. Getting an engineer out to replace 1 GB with 2 GB of DDR1 can be quite expensive.

Re:Insightful analysis... four years late.

[Anonymous Coward]

Broken Window Fallacy

Gartner

[sentientbeing]

Gartner is just a Microsoft lobbying group. Treat them as such.

Re:Gartner

[marcello_dl]

sometimes you sacrifice something expendable for the result you want; the expendable concept is "vista sucks", which many people believe anyway. The result is "wait and buy win7" instead of "windows isn't dominant anymore, consider the alternatives"

 

Re:Gartner

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering we're talking about desktop operating systems deployed in a corporate environment, saying "Windows isn't dominant anymore" would be a lie.

Re:Gartner

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding. We should be rational adults and suck up to Microsoft like the rest of the industry.

not really that insightful

[Gary W. Longsine]

Insightful would be something like this: Businesses which are dependent on proprietary document storage formats like .doc, .xls, and .ppt, or upon Windows-only programming frameworks like Win32, .Net, or ASP should immediately begin migration to platform independent programming API and document storage formats.

Re:not really that insightful

[mhall119]

Or investing in Wine and Mono, to make their existing infrastructure platform independent.

Re:tell me again...

[RiotingPacifist]

Home users - Security, UAC stops stuff running as admin.
Business - erm,well,err...?

I've been saying this for...

[Anarchduke]

For all the venom poured at the feet of Gartner, they are only saying what I have been saying since for months.

Gartner is only giving advice that many IT analysts have been saying for quite some time. Skip vista, hold on to Windows XP, and wait for the next release before considering upgrading. Hardly a controversial statement, especially with Windows 7 due to go Gold by the holiday season.

I know Slashdot has a tradition of instantly hating everything remotely associated with Microsoft, but Gartner is an IT firm that spends a great deal of time advising businesses on how to best implement Microsoft products. They aren't the Mouth of Sauron, speaking what the Eye of Mordor wants spoken.

Honestly, Microsoft would really prefer that businesses upgrade to Vista now, then upgrade to Windows 7 a year from now. That means more money to them. Gartner is only giving common sense advise and saying, hold off on spending your money because Vista is dead end.

Yes, we would all like to see more businesses switch to Linux, but that isn't going to happen very quickly, if at all. But if your company is thinking of migrating from XP to a more modern operating system, it would come as no surprise if the analyst they hired said, "don't go to Vista, wait for Windows 7".

Re:I've been saying this for...

[rahvin112]

Honesty would be Gartner saying that Windows 7 is Windows Vista with a new coat of paint and that there is no real reason to upgrade to Windows 7. The press turned against Microsoft on Vista because of the IT backlash, but lets be honest they've bought the press lock stock and barrel on Windows 7. There isn't a damn thing different about Windows 7 and vista under the hood. The same things that Gartner and others blasted Vista for is being ignored with Windows 7. Microsoft must have paid the appropriate people really well in advance of the Windows 7 reviews because franly their's NO business incentive to upgrade from XP.

6 months!

[RiotingPacifist]

Windows 7 may be better than vista, but surely your going to wait for SP1*, meaning it will be at least a year before its good to go.

*Hell i even wait for 'sp1' before trusting a new ubuntu release (Obviously as a geek i start using it at beta 1)

Skoda tells me to buy a new Skoda

[knarf]

Sony tells me I need a Blueray player, Philips says I should look into ditching that old coffee maker for one of those wasteful cartridge-thingies, Proctor and Gamble insists my hair needs Head and Shoulders, Gartner says we should consider buying the next Microsoft operating system. Since when do I care about what advertisers say?

Re:Skoda tells me to buy a new Skoda

[John Hasler]

> Since when do I care about what advertisers say?

Well, you care enough to know what they say.

Re:Real Insight: Microsoft is also skipping Vista.

[TheThiefMaster]

It doesn't emulate Vista because 7 is 100% Vista compatible. Nothing to emulate.

There's a program compatibility option, and all it does is report "Vista" as the OS instead of 7.

Re:Real Insight: Microsoft is also skipping Vista.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, it's because Windows 7 and Vista are the same thing at the core, and emulating Vista on Windows 7 would be like emulating Windows 95 in Windows 98.

Re:tell me again...

[CarpetShark]

tell me again...What either Vista *or* Windows 7 brings...

DRM, reduced performance, and upgrade fees.

telling the obvious to the clueless

[petes_PoV]

... AND getting paid for it

You've gotta respect the "analysts" at Gartner. Anyone who's read anything about PCs within the last year would have come to this conclusion. However, when you write it in a high-priced report, and present it in a pretty cover, some sort of Dilbert-ian logic takes over and the contents (whatever they happen to be) suddenly have the meaning, insight and authority that makes them worthy of directorial consideration.

Re:telling the obvious to the clueless

[StormReaver]

> Anyone who's read anything about PCs within the last year would have come to this conclusion.

Anyone who's used a Microsoft operating system in the last 15 years should have come to this conclusion a long time ago. I predict two things will happen:

1) The sun will rise in the morning (obvious inaccuracies aside).

2) Microsoft will release Windows 7 to much fanfare, and people will forget the last 15 years of wasted effort trying to keep Windows in operation. They will be shocked, SHOCKED, at all the Windows viruses hampering their work and play. They will bitch and moan, but will keep throwing their time and money in the fire. The temporary good judgment they showed at avoiding Vista will evaporate.

Re:Why go to Windows 7?

[symbolset]

What is ITS value prop?

It could be your last chance to get committed to Software Assurance. That's the amazing deal where you pay Microsoft every year 1/3 the price of their full software stack and in return you get to use the useful upgrades they come out with every twelve years for FREE.

Re:Why migrate from XP to vista?

[jawtheshark]

Its hard to argue to keep an early P4 machine when a few components start failing whenever you can get a machine thats much more powerful for ~$300.

Except that most likely early P4 machines are not failing. I'm typing this on a P-IV 2.6GHz machine. It's been running since fall 2003. Yes, I did some minor upgrades: Notably, 512Meg RAM to 2Gig RAM, 120Gig IDE HD to 500Gig SATA and a better graphics card, but that was mainly because I got it out of another machine... The original, while only DX7 would have done fine: I don't play games. None of these upgrades were necessary. The 2Gig were on sale (and is the maximum possible according to the motherboard documentation). The harddisk, I could have avoided by copying superfluous stuff to a terabyte-USB disk.

In the same room I have a P-IV 1.9GHz with 512Meg RDRAM. I got it out of a dumpster. Works perfectly fine. No components are failing.

The components that most often fail in computers are in order: power supplies, fans, and harddisk. Only the last one is really a problem. None of them are expensive to replace.

Sure, a 300€ PC bought new would blow away performance-wise, but keep in mind that I save 300€ by not spending money on a new machine since my current one does everything I need. Before you say anything: yes, I probably upgraded it in excess of 300€ (after all, those upgrades were done over a span of 6 years), but I spent them ages ago. Not now...

300€ is a lot of beer I can drink instead ;-)

Um...

[sootman]

... won't businesses wait for Windows 7 SP1 anyway?

That said, every geek worth his salt (let alone any actual IT professional) should take advantage of the fact that MS will let you download and run the Release Candidate Customer Preview of Vista 7 Ultimate for free for a year. Works just fine in VirtualBox (also free, for Win, Lin, and OS X) as described here. Even if you hate MS for whatever reason, it's still worth knowing what they're doing, especially if you can do so for free on whatever platform you're (probably) currently using.

Re:tell me again...

[RiotingPacifist]

BitLocker + a TPM means that a laptop theft basically becomes "just" a hardware theft, as opposed to hardware + data on it.

BitLocker To Go = those tons of USB flash drives are at least protected with some type of password that users write to (assuming the policy to require it before writing is allowed is set.)

But companies that need this have been doing it on xp for years, companies that don't still wont bother because of the additional overhead.

And while i do agree that windows7/vista are significantly more secure, I'm under the impression that companies have been able to lock down xp pretty well and migrating means having to lock down a whole new system that admins are less familiar with

The activation issue is, in my personal experience, the second biggest reason why businesses stay with XP, the first being the issue of legacy drivers that don't work under Vista..

I think the biggest reason is that it requires a significant effort, and for a properly secured system there is little benefit.

Re:Gartner, highest bidder

[CarpetShark]

Everyone agrees on skipping vista. It's a common propaganda trick to start with something you'll accept (vista sucks), then feed you what they want you to accept next (buy Windows 7).

Re:Why migrate from XP to vista?

[spanky the monk]

I used to pull working computer/parts out of dumpsters all the time at uni. If you live in a first world country and don't need to play games, you don't even need to buy a computer! Just dust of some garbage and install your favorite linux flavor. Yesterdays gaming machine is my workstation.

I haven't bought a computer for about 6 years.

Re:XP Mode.

[scalarscience]

What the AC next to me is trying to say is that XP Mode does NOT offer improved device support. Virtualization abstracts hardware for the software that is running in the virtual machine, but the OS/hypervisor/etc below it still needs proper driver support for "device compatibility" (to talk to peripherals etc).

Makes sense

[thetoadwarrior]

Windows 7 is basically a service pack for Vista so it's not like you're moving to something completely different. You're moving to Vista as it should be.

Re:tell me again...

[petermgreen]

I just don't get the point of activation in VLK editions. The BSA will rip a business to component atoms who is caught pirating, so activation doesn't ensure MS gets any more revenue than it does already in the business sector.
MS learnt with XP that if they release a no activation required version for some subset of customers (in the XP case volume license ones) then it WILL get leaked and the pirates WILL use it to avoid activation. They can put a key on the WGA shitlist but not everyone installs WGA and they can only do that for keys they know are in widespread illicit use.

As I see it the main point of activation in windows vista/7 volume license editions is to make it harder/riskier (if MAK activations start getting used up unexpectedly quickly someone is going to start asking questions) for people to "borrow" thier employers key to use on thier private machine(s) and possiblly thier friends machines.

Microsoft is just trying to boost initial adoption

[zamfield]

...of Windows 7 so they can claim it is a resounding success of a product launch. And Gartner is just the cheerleader they pay to get the "message" out. Nothing to see here.

Re:Samba support

[fluffy99]

Well, W7 does not support Samba yet

It's Samba that needs to catch up, not Microsoft. Windows7 dropped support for the archaic NT4 domain structure that Samba emulates.

Samba is a poor substitute as a domain controller. Sure you can get an NT4 style domain working, but you're missing out on all the power that Active Directory gives you. For that matter, Samba leaves a lot to be desired as a windows file server as well.

Emperor wears a Thong

[eyepeepackets]

The reviewers who actually do performance evaluations of Windows 7 continue to make this point: The performance between Windows 7 and Vista is marginal at best and often indistinguishable.

Windows 7 is Vista with a marketing make over. It's being pushed from the bottom up in a faux ground swell astroturfers saying "Windows 7 is great!" but ignoring the performance evaluations.

The best that can be said for Windows 7 is that its true name should be Vista SP2.

Re:XP Mode.

[ozmanjusri]

XP Mode is done through virtualization and only works on some CPUs.

Yep.

And if you're going down that path, why not run your instance of XP in a VM on Linux?

More compatibility, less cost and far fewer security issues. If you're going virtual, what's the point of Windows 7 at all?

Hardly.

[crhylove]

Windows 7 may be a service pack for Vista, but what Vista SHOULD BE is an improvement in stability, speed, efficiency and features to XP. It is none of that. It is inferior to XP on every level, save eye candy, where it is solidly beat across the board by Linux and Mac anyway.

Windows 7 should die, just like Vista is dying. I refuse to use either and only use XP or Linux Mint.

There isn't one good reason to use anything else. Macs cost way too much fucking money, and every other version of Windows is inferior.

In particular I use MicroXP quite a bit. Search for it on btjunkie.org. I have a valid XP license, but I prefer the smaller foot print and faster speed of MicroXP hands down, for everything but Microsoft Office, which I don't use anyway:
http://portableapps.com/apps/office/openoffice_portable

And that is why....

[crhylove]

.... a Mac is worth the extra $600 you will pay for identical hardware.....

Or is it? I can get TWO computers for $600 that will run Ubuntu great.

Granted, Mac has it's audience: People with too much money who don't know dick about computers.

Good for them.

switching to Windows 7

[viralMeme]

How about advising them to skip Windows 7 and migrating to Apple - Mac OS X Leopard or a Linux Desktop, or isn't anyone paying them to say that?

AM I the only one

[The Cisco Kid]

MS has not had time since they released Vista to write an entirely new OS.

"Windows 7" *IS* Vista with a different name and and an eye-candy face lift.

--

Microsoft-free since 1995

Re:Samba support

[The Cisco Kid]

Sure, catch up with an undocumented proprietary moving standard. Guess what - thats one of the reasons MS keeps changing things - it isn't to make it work better, its to make solutions from anyone other than MS work less well.

The correct solution is to ditch the entire Microsoft paradigm altogether. Things like Samba are just a band aid for the drooling masses who's eyes glaze over if the buttons aren't in exactly the same position on every computer.