Admins Snub Windows 7, Says Survey
According to Reuters, a survey carried out by ScriptLogic Inc. shows that 6 out of 10 businesses will pass over upgrading to Windows 7 - mostly in an attempt to save a buck and avoid any loss of productivity due to software issues. With a tightening budget and Vista's track record, this is all too expected, and will have Microsoft reworking its upgrade policy in no time.
The 20,000 admin-wide survey showed that about 60 percent of respondents would shy away from deploying Windows 7 altogether, with 34 percent promising to deploy it by the end of 2010. Only 5.4 percent of respondents planned on deploying it by years-end. The survey carries on to explain that a rather unsurprising 35 percent of admins had already skipped upgrades this year due to budget constraints.
A more marketeer-panicking 39 percent were worried their business apps wouldn't work correctly under Windows 7, something we're sure Microsoft will come back to very, very soon.
Possibly Microsoft's greatest merit has been to successfully erradicate the blemish left by Vista, but ultimately it's been focusing on drawing end-users back into the fold while neglecting to point out that 7, contrary to Vista, won't wreak havoc with your admin suites (or will it?). On the other hand, History tells us that if Microsoft was worried about it they'd have bombarded everyone with benchmarks on how productivity will skyrocket as soon as you
It does seem that Microsoft's marketing has its job cut out as, given the current state of affairs, cash-strapped businesses are disregarding the opportunity to buy news PCs now and save a wad of cash later on upgrades because most OEMs are offering free or next-to-nothing Windows 7 upgrades from Vista. Upgrading later will cost admins anywhere between $80~$100 extra per SKU, unless they get into a volume licensing deal.
You can find the full U.S. Windows 7 pricing here on the Windows Team Blog.
Comments
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Talk about a deliberate negative spin on a very positive number for Microsoft. Historically adoption rates are substantially lower than the estimated 40% for Win7. Case in point, XP's adoption rate for the first year was 12-15% making this, 300% higher. Perhaps your title should have been more like, POW, another grand slam hit for Microsoft! This isn't helping the tech industry, that you're obviously dependent on, this kind of prejudiced, slanted reporting hurts it. |
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Well said. I find that few people remember how things were with the last major OS upgrade in businesses, though. I would have thought these were bad numbers too if I hadn't recently discussed it with my IT guy. He went on about how they didn't upgrade to XP for many years. The fact that 40% say they'll upgrade within about a year is pretty incredible. |
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Maybe I'm reading it differently than you, but 40% is not the number that would adopt it in the first year, it's the number that would consider adopting it at all. Only 34% of *that* group planned to adopt it by the end of 2010. That's 13.6% of the whole, making it the same as XP, not higher. My thought is that those 13.6% are naive or very very small. Any company talking about deploying before SP1 is scheduled has never deployed a Windows update in any large corporation. EDIT: I found the source survey online, and YOU'RE RIGHT! Apparently, 34% of the respondents said they'd likely deploy by the end of 2010. Basically, everyone that is upgrading thinks they'll upgrade in the next 16 months. But, 1.4% of the respondents said they had already deployed Windows 7... and it's not even available until the end of July. So, the survey's numbers are most likely meaningless crap. Actual adoption rates are probably going to vary greatly, depending on how well it's received by the early adopters.
// Riddle of the day: Why does the ver command report Windows 6.1? :p // |
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Sounds to me like some of these numbers are complete crap. Seriously, if a business is worried about if its software will work with windows 7, then they should have had their IT department running those tests since the beta of windows 7. If you have a business that doesnt have an IT dept that does this sort of thing, then obviously there are more problems in the company than upgrading OSes. |
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>> if a business is worried about if its software will work with windows 7, then they should have had their IT department running those tests since the beta of windows 7. << Testing against a beta version of Windows would be a horrible waste of the average company's money. Looking for stuff that's broken before the vendor's have even had a chance to finish their own testing and get their software certified for the new OS just makes no sense. Maybe I have a different viewpoint because we have literally a thousand or so packaged applications deployed to 14,000+ internal desktops. Testing/re-testing software through beta cycles would *not* be a productive use of IT time. I can't see why anyone else would be worried about their software running on Windows 7 or have a compelling need to upgrade right now as there is no Win7-only software. Wait for SP1 and you will always save your company a ton of money through problem avoidance (or skipping the OS entirely - as many did for Vista). The foremost goal of a real IT department is reliability, and you don't get that by jumping on the bleeding edge. Even companies in the business of developing new software should use separate development boxes or virtual machines, leaving their office and productivity apps on the stable OS for some period. |
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