News
Poll: 40 Percent of Companies Plan To Be on Vista Within a Year
While most corporations eventually intend to migrate, it could be a long process, and there are still significant concerns with Vista.
A newly-released Windows Vista tracking poll shows that while most corporations
do eventually intend to migrate to the operating system, it could be a long
process, and there are still significant concerns surrounding Microsoft's newest
platform.
The poll by CDW Corp. revealed that 40 percent of the companies surveyed plan
to have implemented Vista by this time next year. Currently, 29 percent of the
respondents' organizations are using or testing Vista, an increase of 8 percent
over the first tracking poll, which was done in October 2006. Eventually, 87
percent plan on having Vista in place.
Perhaps ominously for Microsoft, as corporations use Vista more, their opinion
of it drops. Between the first and second tracking poll, the number of respondents
who have a "very favorable" opinion of Vista dropped from 14 percent
to 12 percent, while those who have a "somewhat favorable" opinion
of Vista sank from 56 percent to less than half, at 48 percent. The percentage
of those who have a "somewhat unfavorable" opinion of Vista more than
doubled, from 6 percent to 14 percent.
Some of the chief concerns poll takers have about Vista are expected bugs in
a version 1 release of a product and excessive hardware requirements.
Two other negative findings show how much work Microsoft has ahead of itself
to sell Vista: 40 percent of respondents said their current OS -- often an earlier
Windows version -- already meets their needs; and 38 percent said the benefits
of moving to Vista aren't yet clear enough.
End users, however, are more positive about Vista. Twenty-six percent said
they've gotten "strong positive feedback" or "some positive feedback"
from their users about Vista, compared to just 13 percent that have gotten "some
negative feedback" or "negative feedback."
Far and away the top benefit expected in a move to Vista is better security,
listed by 78 percent of poll takers. Fifty-six percent want improved performance,
a finding which would appear to be at odds with Vista's resource-hungry reputation.
Coming in third, at 40 percent, is improved productivity.
The margin of error of the poll, which received feedback from 753 IT decision
makers, was plus or minus 3.5 percent.
About the Author
Keith Ward is the editor in chief of Virtualization & Cloud Review. Follow him on Twitter @VirtReviewKeith.