Microsoft Trying To Woo Businesses To Windows 8

jfruh writes "Windows 8 is the most radical rewrite of Microsoft's operating system in decades — and most of the changes are aimed at consumers and new tablet form-factors. Meanwhile, corporate IT is deeply suspicious. Over at Microsoft TechEd Europe, the company is gamely trying to explain to enterprises why they should switch, with easy-to-write enterprise apps and the ability to stream server-side x86 apps to Windows RT. Not everyone is convinced."

Comments

Because IT Deptartments are Conservative

[Hardhead_7]

IT Departments are innately conservative. Doing something different can get you fired. It's the same thing that led to the "no one ever got fired for buying Windows" line in the '90s. Hell, IT Departments are just now beginning to get off of XP. A radical change like 8? It's not going to fly. Windows 8 needs to become "normal" to the IT Department before they'll allow it in. In fact, I bet it'll end up being a lot like Vista. IT will hold off until 9, when issues that crop up with Windows 8 have been ironed out.

Re:Because IT Deptartments are Conservative

[bmo]

And it took forever for IT departments to switch off of NT4 or 2K to XP.

Microsoft's biggest competition is its older versions.

--
BMO

Re:Because IT Deptartments are Conservative

[Anonymous Coward]

Secure boot isn't meant to kill off linux. It's meant to kill off XP

Re:Because IT Deptartments are Conservative

[hairyfish]

Another point not taken into consideration, is that the driver for change in the 90's and early 00's was rapid hardware improvements with necessitated OS upgrades for support. Around about 2006 we reached a plateau where CPU, RAM, storage, video, USB etc all reached a level where it satisfied most people's requirements. Dual core CPU's were available to user for the first time, the MHz race had ended, RAM and storage was of sufficient size to never really have to think about it again, and most devices were USB plug and play for the first time ever. Since then there is no real reason to upgrade other than for shinyness (rather than for productivity). I still have my laptop from 2006 and it still does everything my brand new one does, it even has higher res screen. The major changes since then have all been in the mobile space, which obviously MS is trying play catch up with Apple and Google. This is great if you want an MS phone or tablet, but for those of us that just want a cheap and reliable desktop experience, WinXP is still does the job, and I don't see how the UI can really be improved much. Corporates don't need flashy graphics, or pinch and swype touch interfaces. We need a simple desktop that is easily managed and is compatible with everything and supports all our apps. A keyboard and mouse are still the most efficient and productive input methods for a desktop. Right now, today, XP still does all that, so what is the driver behind the need to change?

Re:Because IT Deptartments are Conservative

[hairyfeet]

Are you kidding? A LOT of people used Win2K, not the least of which they'd use a Win2K machine at the office and find out "Hey! Unlike ME this thing doesn't crash when I look at it funny!" and would end up getting a copy from "somewhere" they could use at home. I knew a lot of folks that hung onto win2K for years simply because of how solid that OS was, just a damned well built OS. Can't say as i blamed 'em, I used XP X64 (aka Win2K3 Workstation) right up to Win 7 RTM because Vista blew chunks for me, i got bit by both the "playing music files slows the network" bug as well as the "file shares just disappear" bug which was irritating as hell.

So if I was doing the list it would be 95/98/NT3 sucks, 98SE/NT4 good, ME sucks, Win2K great, XP pre SP2 sucks, XP post SP2 good, XP64 great, Vista sucks, Win 7 great, Win 8 sucks donkey nuts.

One thing you can get MSFT credit for is the life cycle on their OSes is long enough you can easily skip any suck ass versions without losing updates. i personally went from 2K to XP X64 on my main system thus not dealing with the pre SP2 suckatude, and I was able to go from XP X64 to Win 7 X64 again while skipping Vista as my main OS. Since my current system is a hexacore with 8Gb of RAM I'm sure i'll be able to skip Win 8 and if they rush Win 9 like they did 7 I may even be able to skip it as well, just depends on whether they actually give us the option of getting rid of the "supergigantic smartphone UI" on the desktop or not, because I have no desire to treat my desktop as a giant tweeting twitting FB shitting cell phone.

Good reason to be wary

[93 Escort Wagon]

With radical rewrites come lots of new bugs - and lots of sysadmins whose years of experience may not translate. For corporate IT, both of those make Win8 a "go slow" proposition - at best.

Considering the number of companies still on XP...

[logicassasin]

... it's amazing how Microsoft still doesn't really get it. Business doesn't really need Metro. There's entire indistries that still get their bread and butter from CLI-based apps (insurance and travel immediately come to mind as does various medical professions) so what advantage does 8 have for them? As stated in the article, unless there's a way to skip Metro all together, many helpdesk staffers will get pissed from fielding many calls asking "Where's my desktop at?".

Were I a CTO or even just an IT manager, I'd go for 7 on the next refresh and give 8 time to mature.

If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It (Yet.)

[ausoleil]

Microsoft will have a tough sell when it comes to Win8 with many if not most of their large customers.

First all, while they are still the preferred desktop OS vendor, their reputation precedes them: new releases of Windows often come with a seemingly built-in period where problems and flaws need to be worked out -- most of the time by the first service pack, others, not until the second or later. That in turn means lowered productivity across the userbase and increased support costs. To make things worse, often times the answer from even the highest levels of Microsoft's support is "that will be fixed in the next service pack" and the problem is left open. Companies know this and have learned to wait.

Secondly, Microsoft has a bad habit of changing the way their OS works, and that leads to lower productivity thanks to users "having to look" for features and controls they previously knew how to find. Win7 did it, as did Vista and to a smaller extent XP. That even affects the support groups, as they too have to climb up a new learning curve. Companies have learned this too and often wait until they are familiar with the new OS -- sometimes using their own staff as guinea pigs for the desk-side support guys.

Finally, Microsoft's upgrades -- and anyone's really -- have a way of breaking legacy applications that are critical to the business's needs. Then there are vendors who have not certified the new Microsoft OS as being compatible with their products. No certification, no support. No support, it doesn't get fixed and that leaves the business without a piece of its business process software working correctly. Companies have learned this as well and have learned how to wait.

All in all, the conservatism of IT groups is a learned behavior, and if Microsoft has problems selling their OS upgrades because of this, a large part of it is their own doing.

MS is high.

[Karmashock]

Business doesn't like radical rewrites of the OS. People like MS because it's consistent. Everyone still isn't over the Windows vista/7 issue. No one is going to buy windows 8 especially since given the pattern Windows 8 will probably be terrible.

Lets face it...

98 good/ok
98 ME bad
XP Good
Vista bad
Windows 7 Good/ok

We're also not used to upgrading our OS this fast. There's no need for windows 8. People will be happy with windows 7 for years and years. Is that a profit problem for MS? How? They're collecting license fees on every new machine.

As to Metro, touch integration, etc. Careful with that stuff. Annoy enough people with the OS and you're going to get people to install alternative shells or completely jump ship to linux. We don't like radical changes like that. And most worrying MS is dropping a lot of it's backward compatibility. That's not acceptable. If I have to start running lots of custom VMs of windows just to run old software that won't work in new versions of MS. At some point there's no problem with just switching to linux or Mac. It's all the same at a certain point.

So... be careful.

Metro?

[roc97007]

Ok, clue me in. I really need to know this. Why would I make a Metro app, which only runs on Windows 8, especially a client/server app as described in TFA, when I can make a web app that runs in any environment that has a web browser? What is the percentage in coding to a single, specialized environment when everyone else in the world is coding using mature cross-platform web-based solutions. Wouldn't coding to Metro be a really good way to commit corporate suicide?