Euro-giants sticking to XP
A survey of some of the largest corporate computer users in Europe has found XP is still dominating, with only 9% using Vista in some form. Feedback to the survey suggests many firms simply don’t see a business need for Vista.
The study comes from the Corporate IT forum, an organisation open only to corporate computer users rather than suppliers or consultants. The idea of the group is to share information about how computing technology is actually working in practice rather than the marketing hype.
While the full details of studies are restricted to members, the group has released some of the headline figures. Perhaps surprisingly 31% of companies questioned are still using Windows 2000, though that includes 19% which are actively phasing it out.
XP is by far the most popular system, with 72% using it for some purposes, while just 9% are using Vista in any form. Indeed, the majority of those Vista users are either piloting the system or using it in isolation.
Perhaps most worryingly for the Vista brand, more firms (30%) are ‘investigating or analysing’ Windows 7, more than the total for firms already using or even considering Vista.
To put things into perspective, only 43 firms took part in the study, so there’s a pretty significant statistical margin of error. And it does appear those questioned are particularly cautious of new Microsoft editions: two-thirds are still using Internet Explorer 6, first released in 2001, rather then the latest edition.
That said, these figures do give added weight to the theory that Vista take-up by corporate users has proved disappointing. It may well be the early negative press had a particularly strong effect on corporate buyers who feel they can’t afford to take risks when choosing an operating system for potentially hundreds or thousands of machines.
And while Microsoft may tout overall sales and strong consumer figures, it’s exactly these larger business users who make the most difference to a system’s success: most consumers and small firms simply get a new system when they buy a new PC, while larger companies pick and choose when they upgrade.
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October 3rd, 2008
The continual beating of this fact as proof of Vista and Microsoft failure only shows how little you know about corporate IT.
The VLA’s from Microsoft have always allowed installing older versions of it’s products. They know business IT is about software facilitating business processes, and that means software. As long as you pay a license fee to Microsoft, they’re ok with it.
Downgrading from Vista has more to do with ensuring the security and enterprise tools developed over the last four years with XP as the desktop OS continue to function. Notice I said 4 years, because prior to that 2000 was going to be used. Having a mixed environment is costly and upgrading to the latest OS isn’t much of a benefit.
October 6th, 2008
European corporations know a lot about corporate I.T., and are sensibly following the well-established trend of avoiding Vista like the plague. As operating systems go, Vista is an abysmal failure (and of course the responsibility for that failure rests squarely with Microsoft).
It is interesting that Microsoft are now saying that Windows 7 will be nothing more than Vista revisited (what a surprise – I thought that they were going to write a brand spanking new OS in just two or three years…). Obviously, the management at Microsoft are happy living in their la-la land, where anything and everything that is wrong with Vista is the fault of the hardware vendors, the customers, the media – anyone but Microsoft. They are in deep denial, and as long as that persists they will keep going downhill. Windows 7 will doubtless provide a reprise of the Vista fiasco: rehashed code that is legacy software from the moment of its release. What a shame.