Five years on and finally Vista launches

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.

To add or view comments on this article please link here at digg