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.

[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.

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"

 

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: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.

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: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.

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.

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.

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.