Is Vista a victim of the credit crunch?
With businesses of all sizes feeling the pinch, there’s a theory gathering ground that Vista upgrades might be getting put on hold as a cost-cutting measure. It comes as a leading analyst predicts IT spending will be lower than expected next year.
Forrester Research says the 2008 figures will be better than expected, but predicts spending will grow by 6.1% next year. That may sound a lot, but does include the effects of general inflation; more significantly, it’s down from an earlier Forrester forecast of 9.4%.
The current economic problems could be a specific problem for the tech industry. Forrester estimates that 18% of all IT spending in the US is made by financial firms – the very sector which appears to suffering the most drastic problems.
Speculation is growing that the cutbacks in spending might be particularly focused on upgrades. Charles Ward (pictured) of IT trade group Intellect told Silicon.com “If you have a hardware refresh scheduled and that has to be delayed for another six months, that’s not likely to make a huge amount of difference. Similarly software upgrades or integration projects following mergers can be delayed.”
While Vista sales have been relatively strong among home users (many of whom get the system bundled with a new machine), most of the concern has been over business upgrades. Medium and large companies are much more likely to upgrade multiple machines at once – if they decide it’s worthwhile. If money is tight in 2009, any firms still on the fence about Vista may well be thinking they can get by until Windows 7.
It could be an opportunity for Microsoft to promote Vista though. Some analysts have pointed out that firms will be reluctant to cut spending on security measures simply because the financial consequences of a security breach make doing so a false economy. That seems like a great reason to push Vista’s enhanced security measures in comparison with XP. And support costs may well be seen as a disposable expense, meaning Microsoft could persuade potential business upgraders by extending its free support offer.
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September 17th, 2008
Vista is crap! Microsoft is teh Devil! DRM! Bloated resource hog! Evil!
That should save a few people some time.
September 18th, 2008
Hello Ken,
You did save me some time (and gave me a good chuckle into the bargain
September 18th, 2008
I think that while we might likely see a decrease in spending on software and IT assets in the coming months we will probably not see a decrease in spending on IT services. It’s been interesting to see IT spending actually go up in recent years, even in light of bad economic conditions. I think perhaps this is a combination of things, including businesses in need of additional support to help make older products more efficient or to protect them from the increasing number of security threats or simply a need for businesses to admit that technology is becoming important in just about every type of business and can’t be ignored. I’ll be interested to see what Microsoft does to promote itself now (besides the new ad campaigns!) and make its products more appealing and also affordable for users feeling the crunch.
September 18th, 2008
I’ll be here all week. Remember to tip your waitress.