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2007 promises to be a seminal year for the future of operating systems, with all major players releasing significant new features and much ‘eye candy’ in their new releases. At the same time the position of the front runners and new entrants may mean that 2007 points the way to a very different course, with Microsoft, Apple and Linux all jockeying for position.

The end of November saw the limited, business release of the much-awaited version of Microsoft’s latest offering of Vista. The much-hyped OS has been in the public eye for nearly five years after it’s first outing under the code name ‘Longhorn’ in 2001.

The original feature list of Longhorn was rich, promising a new and bold direction for Microsoft. Since then the IT world has changed dramatically, the proliferation of the Internet has exposed Microsoft’s weakness in the face of continued attacks from viruses and hackers. Over the five-year period the promising features have been dropped one by one. Today Microsoft sights security and ease of maintenance as the key benefits of moving to Vista – hardly something that will set the world alight.

The most aesthetic elements of Vista are its inclusion of multimedia and its glass-like ‘Aero’ interface. Vista does indeed look pretty, but most commentators have pointed out that the ‘experience’ is still the same as Windows XP and that there are few real enhancements ‘under the hood’ in terms of usability. There is also an issue that the entry-level version of Vista doesn’t contain the Aero feature and effectively looks like XP.

The consumer version of Vista will hit the streets at the end of January 2007, though due to high costs of the upgrade and requirement of higher specification machines, the uptake is expected to be more muted than previous Microsoft OS launches. In the business world Al Gillen, a research analyst at IDC in Framingham, Mass said "Companies don’t need to be told when they need to upgrade," “Many eventually will make the leap,” he said, “but probably not until 2008.”

So it’s already beginning to look like 2007 will not be the year Vista takes off.

While details of Vista were starting to emerge, it fell upon Apple to spoil the hype by releasing details and showing off its next version of operating system, Leopard.

Apple had already beaten Microsoft the aesthetic game many years prior, with its glass-like interface and renowned ease of use. Coupled with the bold move to a Unix like core, Apple has forged ahead relentlessly with innovative features and seamless transition to the Intel platform.

Leopard leverages off this head start with improvements to the interface, increasing its fluid like appearance and adding a whole host of improvements to usability, such as backups and communication.

Leopard is expected to ship in the first quarter of 2007 and will see rapid take up of upgrades and, of course will ship on all new Macs.

The head to head comparisons of Leopard versus Vista puts Vista in the shade, but there is one big catch – in order to run Leopard the user will need to own or purchase a Macintosh. Apple has not taken the bold move to allow non-Mac PC users to run its OS. Whilst we expect Apple’s shipments to grow off the back of Leopard, the anchor of the hardware will limit it’s real potential.

Waiting silently in the wings is another contender for the 2007 honours – Linux.

Over the last few years Linux has been silently chipping away at the corporate world, building momentum in the IT basement running servers. In fact just under a quarter of all server shipments for 2007 are expected to be running Linux according to market forecasters IDC.

With recent deals and announcements from Oracle and Microsoft, Linux has once again been pushed into the news.

More interestingly, the Linux world itself is moving past the point of adolescent growing pains to gain a confidence of its own. Whilst much work has been focused on providing a stable secure platform (hence it’s rapid adoption rate in the server market), recent focus has been on getting Linux onto the desktop. The introductions of rapidly growing distributions like Ubuntu have seen dramatic but quite adoption of Linux on the desktop in the last few years.

Linux has mapped the improvements of Macintosh and Windows in a limited manner. Though this year has seen a dramatic focus on the user rather than the IT manager. Distributions of Linux are moving out of the domain of the techie and increasingly becoming easier for end users to install without help or detailed technical knowledge.

More importantly though, Linux distributions will match the glass-like look and feel of Vista and Macintosh with new releases around the first quarter of 2007. At the same time, the rate at which Linux is improving usability is likely to outpace Microsoft and catch up with Apple.

With the choice of  new desktop platforms falling to IT managers in many organisations the timing of Linux and Vista may prove critical as these managers review upgrade costs and security. We suspect that this year will be the first point that many businesses will seriously consider Linux as a viable and cost effective alternative to Microsoft Vista.

Expect a proliferation of hardware vendors to seriously offer desktop Linux options for the first time this year. Expect independent software vendors such as Oracle, SAP, BEA, Adobe and others to jump on to the bandwagon as well, as increased adoption rates become apparent.

In the consumer space we expect Linux to be the ‘hidden OS’ of choice, for example Tivo runs on Linux, though it’s not apparent to most Tivo users.

When we enter 2007 we expect that it will appear to be the year of Vista and Leopard, as we leave the year and look back we expect that it will become clear that in fact 2007 was the year of Linux.

According to the Financial Times, Microsoft’s attempt to enter the iPod market faltered before the product even left the starting line. And now sales are starting to flag according to observers.

The report quotes analysts saying that the device from Microsoft will need a series of tweaks if it is to gain a foothold in the personal digital audio player market. The report even says that there will be announcements of newer versions of the device early in the New Year.

When first launched two weeks ago, Zune was heralded as the number two digital audio devices in the first week, accounting for 9 percent of the MP3 player market, though it was a distant second place behind the market leader, Apple’s iPod with 63 percent according to market research group NPD.

But the interest has faded rapidly according to observers, with Zune now falling far behind even the SanDisk or Creative MP3 players on Amazon.com – which is often used as the ‘bell weather’ for gadget sales.

The FT quotes Mr McGuire at Gartner as saying “Somewhere around version three, they [always] get it right. But I’m not sure they have that sort of time, given the speed of iPod product development.”

Analysts think Microsoft should update the current software and firmware by CES in January and push out a new product in early spring.

It’s early days for Zune – the handheld media market has been a spotty play for Microsoft, many forget that this is already the company’s third attempt at the market. At the same time Apple has managed to innovate at breathtaking speed – for Microsoft to get up to, or ahead of the curve will be a difficult task.

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Microsoft has had a long time to ready itself for the much delayed roll out of its latest Vista operating system. With Bill Gates slipping slowly into the background it was left to Microsoft’s Chief Executive, Steve Ballmer to utter the superlatives and hyperbole.

Yesterday Microsoft launched the first phase of it’s Vista operating system to the business world – consumers will need to wait a few more months until the release of the Home Edition of the software aimed at them.

In a world where people expect technology to change at ever faster breakneck speed, Microsoft has failed to deliver anything new to the consumer and business desktop for five years until the release of Vista.

The roll out of the new business version of Vista into the Business community will be slow - companies will first want to test the software in a controlled manner with current applications and then hold their breath to see what the vulnerability to viruses is like. At the same time, many business users will not have desktops that are powerful enough to run Vista, so an upgrade of both software and hardware will need to be factored into IT budgets - if deemed necessary at all.

Ironically Microsoft’s Vista website hosts an IDC white paper outlining the usual cost saving for total cost of ownership (TCO) of Vista, yet at the same time IDC itself predicts a slow uptake of Vista. Al Gillen, a research analyst at IDC in Framingham, Mass said "Companies don’t need to be told when they need to upgrade," “Many eventually will make the leap,” he said, “but probably not until 2008.”

Many of the reviews of Vista have focussed more on the estimated marketing spend from Microsoft ($500 million according to Ballmer) than the new system itself. Vista has had a long gestation period, first announced under the code name ‘Longhorn’ back in 2001. Since then the IT world has changed dramatically, the proliferation of the Internet has exposed Microsoft weakness in the face of continued attacks from viruses and hackers.

PC hardware vendors have also complained about reductions in their already slim margins as Microsoft increases the licensing costs of Vista across the board. In most regions of the world it cost more to buy Vista and Office than the hardware it runs on.

Many of the innovative original features have been dropped from the 2001 Longhorn specifications as Microsoft has scrambled to get Vista out of the doors.

In the meantime Apple has consistently beaten Microsoft to the game with perfectly crafted, secure and stunning versions of its operating system Mac OS X, with put even today’s Vista offering to shame.

At the same time the rapidly growing markets in Brazil, Russia, China and India have made strategic moves to adopt open source, free alternatives such as Linux instead of being tied into the control of Microsoft’s monopoly.

Linux was previously the domain of nerds and geek, is starting to make significant inroads into these markets with the release of simple to install products like Ubuntu. Even more appealing to these markets is that the software is free and significantly more impervious to viruses and hacks than Microsoft’s offerings to date.

With 30 percent of the worlds servers running Linux, IT managers and support staff already have the skill set and confidence in-house to implement Linux onto desktops as well. Certainly Novell and Ubuntu see the introduction of Vista as an opportunity to convince office managers on tight budgets of the benefits of the open source world.

Ultimately, the real test of the success of Vista will be the roll out to consumers at the end of January 2007. Older PC’s may not be able to run Vista, so a backlash could occur unless managed very well. The consumers will also expose Vista to the vagaries of the insecure world of the Internet, without the same level of firewall protection and support that office workers take for granted, effectively creating the same breeding ground for viruses that in many cases has spread to office machines with catastrophic results.

With the shear inertia that Microsoft has there should be no doubt that Vista will succeed, but by how much is anyone’s guess at the moment.

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