Enterprises are Slowly Warming Up to Windows Vista

Windows Vista has definitely never been a favorite matter among company IT people. According to a Forrester report, released late last week, two years after Vista's release, the OS is still competing in the enterprise sector. Forrester recently finished its annual hardware survey. It was found that IT managers at North American and European enterprises are slowly warming up to Windows Vista. Forrester stated that nearly a third of companies are deploying Vista.

When Forrester interviewed 962 IT decision-makers from North American and European companies, almost 10% of the enterprise PCs were running Vista in August and September. Regardless of considerable interest in Windows 7, Forrester analyst Ban Gray wrote; Windows Vista is finally shaping out to be the operating system that displaces Windows XP.

On July 2008, a report from the same Forrester stated that Vista adoption in enterprises was stuck at 8.8%, compared to Windows XP's 87.1%. They even called Vista the "new Coke". 30% of IT managers who told Forrester last fall that they were already deploying Vista, another 27% said they planned to deploy Vista this year or in 2010. 15% of respondents told Forrester they planned to skip Vista for Windows 7, with another 28% reporting that they had no plans or were uncertain.

Forrester is trying to make it all a little more positive for the much-maligned XP successor. It states that 31% of IT decision makers have begun their migration to Vista. However, that can mean anything from reading Micorsoft's Vista pages to actually placing orders for new computers. So it doesn't mean a whole lot.

While most IT managers are anticipating the fight with managing their upcoming dual-OS environments of Windows XP and Windows Vista, some recognize it is going only to get worse as they are required to more broadly support Macs, Linux, and even consumer PCs as a result of Tech Populism's influence on the client domain.

Resources:
Forrester's research: Enterprises Warming to Windows Vista
Nearly a third of enterprises are deploying Vista
Adoption of Vista in enterprises is 10%