Is Microsoft really to blame?
I have had some interesting conversations with clients that are refusing to look at Vista as an operating system for their new systems, pretty soon they will have no choice as the June 30th date for the taps to be shut off on XP on OEM systems rapidly approaches. What are you going to do? Downgrade, well we have had some pretty bad horror stories on the entire downgrade story. Just today I heard in my office that one of my engineers was having continuous BSOD’s(Blue Screen of Death) during the downgrade process.
Who is to blame in the slow adoption of Vista? Is it the MAC/PC ads and Microsoft’s slow or even lack of advertising to combat it? Is it the partners who have not adopted Vista or even blessed it? Is the OEM”s who continiously keep offering XP? Is the ISV partners who still have buggy code on Vista? Is it the device manufacturers who do not have device drivers? I think it is a combination of all of the above. All of this and Vista has been out for 18 months.
Now, I run Windows Vista Ultimate and I would never even think about moving off of Vista now. In my opinion, Windows Vista is the best operating system to ever come out of Redmond. I am more productive running Windows Vista especially when I work from Good Earth Cafes or Starbucks. I have to admit the Wireless access is fantastic. Windows Vista is the platform that everyone must be one, I couldn’t imagine doing business without it, not to mention the additional security built into the operating system, the reliability of Internet Explorer, the Bitlocker technology that encrypts my hard drive and so much more, sure it has it’s challenges, however, those challenges are far less than the benefits I receive from running Windows Vista.
I also believe that the software vendors need to get on the bandwagon, and they are catching the last wagon, because it has been 18 months roughly and if they are not on board they will be out of business or writing code for the Apple platform. The time has passed for you to be ready ISV’s!
So my recommendation is to stop blaming Microsoft, Vista was available to the channel and beta long before it was released and still many of us (IT Pro’s, developers and OEM’s) did not catch the wave. We only have ourselves to blame for this one. Not Microsoft, Not Steve Jobs for the funny commercials, Not the IT Pro’s or developers that are on board…we only have ourselves to blame!
June 20th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
I think that our business clients’ impressions of Vista are informed (or misinformed!) by their experiences as a consumer…when they buy a Vista PC and have problems, when they hear a complaint from a friend, or when they see the Mac ads. So, I do think Microsoft and partners would benefit if Microsoft would more aggressively respond to those ads, explaining that Vista is NOT a failed product and has some great benefits. I use it, too, and love it. I’d never go back.
All that said, I think Microsoft “missed” a bit on Vista for the SMB market. Many of Vista’s biggest benefits are in the areas of deployment and management…areas that aren’t as impactful/important for SMB as they are for enterprise. So, I think the idea that clients will do an upgrade on existing machines is one we should let go of…but we aren’t hesitating to recommend or sell Vista to our clients as OEM on their new (Lenovo!) machines. (Sorry, Stuart…couldn’t help but make my shameless Lenovo plug again….)
Erik
June 20th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
When you say, “stop blaming Microsoft, Vista was available to the channel and beta long before it was released and still many of us (IT Pro’s, developers and OEM’s) did not catch the wave.” I completely disagree. While we did get beta and release candidates to play with we did NOT get a copy we could use in our own production environments until after it was RTM to system builders and SA. We got it 2 months later with MSDN VLK and approximately 4 months later with MAPS! We looked like idiots when our customers asked us how it works. I don’t think that was the sole cause but it certainly did NOT help us ride the “wave”.
Two blogs of interest related to this topic:
Vista Capable Logo Lawsuit http://sbsc.techcareteam.com/archives/164
Top-Ten Vista Facts You Should Know http://sbsc.techcareteam.com/archives/235
That said, Vista is here. Vista works great in the right enviroment and on the right hardware. Vista works better than great with Server 2008. We either need to work harder to help MS get that message out or plan to keep support XP without MS’s help.
June 20th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
Stuart,
Vista is a great product today and I don’t see any reason to not be using it. That being said I totally understand the slow adoption. We installed it on half of the PCs in our company as soon as it came out (the other half we had to wait due to software compatibility issues) and we really struggled with it until SP1 came out. Slow bootup times outlook issues, etc kept us from being as productive as we should have been. Our customers buy what we tell them to buy and at the time we couldn’t tell them Vista is the way to go like we can today.
I also believe that unlike applications the desktop OS is a PC purchase time decision only and upgrades just don’t happen. Unless you’re an enterprise and can get economies of scale by doing mass upgrades I don’t see SMB customers upgrading - just going current when they buy new. Because of the issues out of the gate and lack of marketing to restore confidence Vista can only get desktop deployment share as new PCs are purchased.
June 20th, 2008 at 9:06 pm
We’ve been using and selling Vista from day one.
This is Microsoft’s latest operating system. It is irresponsible for partners to encourage their clients to delay.
Unless someone cannot upgrade due to hardware issues or line of business applications, everyone should be on Vista.
And, BTW, it is irresponsible for all the hardware and LOB vendors to not yet have Vista-ready versions of their products. The code was out for developers for a year before the product was released.
The real “big picture” problem is that the installed base is so large. Microsoft should be able to to look at their own historical sales and see that migration times are affected by the size of the install base. Bigger base: longer migration time frame.
June 20th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
This really boils down to resistance to change. Most of our customers are basing their decision on what they read and hear, not any testing or efforts. We actually had Vista in production a full year before release. It worked then and it works now. The right hardware is required and some app tweaking has to be done, but we have found hardly any apps that cannot be put on Vista and configured to work, even when the LOB vendor says it won’t. Microsoft maybe didn’t do a great job getting software vendors in line, but the product is solid, it works and there is no reason to delay.
As partners, we need to have it on our machines and evangelize it to our clients. They follow our lead. I see a major problem in that many partners aren’t using it. That is where we have to start!
June 21st, 2008 at 10:12 am
I run a small IT services company in the UK - we look after mainly small (5 to 50 staff) businesses. From this perspective:
* Erik’s comments about the advantages of Vista being focussed on the enterprise ring true.
* In general SMB’s don’t have the luxury of testing deployments, they just want stuff to work
* Vista is closely associated with Office 2007. It has to be said that together they are markedly less stable than XP plus Office 2003
* Applications matter, operating system behaviour shouldn’t (though os standardisation is critical).
June 21st, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Stuart;
MSP University participated in a recent Microsoft in-the-field training series pilot titled “Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista Better Together!” This was an event that brought together Microsoft area resources, partners, Partner Readiness, East Region Breadth, MSAM, and the Windows Server and Vista BMO.
The pilot’s goal was to drive Server sales in the area by educating Small Business-focused Partners on Server family and Windows Vista SP1 messaging by emphasizing solution selling, product differentiation and understanding of the licensing models and offers in the market.
The audience was tarteted as SBSC’s, Low Volume VAR’s and tPAM-managed Partners.
Our role centered on educating and training the attendees in sales techniques and overcoming objections to close Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista sales.
Although evaluations of the overall event series were excellent (averaging 9+ in all categories), I was most challenged during the overcoming objections modules for Windows Vista, with the most common complaint from attendees at every single event the perception that Microsoft really dropped the ball by including the BitLocker feature only in the Ultimate version of Vista; as you mention, Stuart, and leaving it out of the Business version.
It was the consensus among attendees that including BitLocker in the Business version of Vista would have been a compelling enough reason for their clients to make the decision to migrate, barring any incompatibiity issues in the environment.
Another concern raised was the attendees’ and their cleints’ reticense to feel comfortable deploying Vista until SP1, which addressesd numerous other issues voiced during our events.
Additionally, it hasn’t helped change the “I’ll wait until the last possible moment to upgrade” attitude of the attendees’ clients when Bill Gates begins commenting on the timeline for the next version of Windows, or Microsoft’s complete lack of response to the creative and effective Mac marketing machine, as Erik points out.
As a result of my experience during these pilot events, I have changed my position from believing clients were just resistant to change; as Arlin points out, when encountering resistance to Vista upgrades. As our clients’ Trusted Advisor, we did sell and implement Vista refreshes in the right scenarios, but like many of the attendees to the Microsoft event series we helped conduct, there were many client environments (including our own) that we could not fully refresh at the time of Vista launch due to LOB or hardware driver incompatibilities.
Now I fully understand the rationale behind blaming 3rd party vendors for not having their solutions Vista-ready, but folks - in the end, does that argument really hold water? The bottom line is that these are real business issues preventing clients from wholeheartedly getting behind Vista - Trusted Advisor or not. And frankly, we as the Trusted Advisors are the ones to identify incompatibilities and steer clients away from Vista when it would negatively impact their business processes, efficiencies and profitability.
This topic contains so many compelling arguments on both sides that standing firmly on either side of the argument is a real challenge.
Erick Simpson
MSP University
http://www.mspu.us
June 22nd, 2008 at 5:15 pm
So without bashing Vista the Os let’s look at what most are saying as to why we should be using Vista.
1. It’s the best OS from MS if on the right hardware and in the right enviroment.
So evey business out there should drop thousands of dollars in replacing systems that work to pick up new systems, train the users and deal with the issues they are going to have with software, drivers and so forth? Things are slowing right now for most businesses. Even those that are not slowing down hear the doom and gloom on the news and are wary of making huge changes to their business and face it tossing out your 2003 server and all your desktops, probably all your LOB software and more just to use the new OS is not a small task.
It’s not a Geek thing, it’s not Vista bashing, it’s business 101, you don’t spend money that you don’t “have to” spend.
http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/06/17/vista-faces-an-uphill-battle-with-businesses/
June 22nd, 2008 at 6:26 pm
I have been running Vista Business on my office desktop since it was made available in the Action Pack. Meanwhile, I continue to run XP Tablet Edition on my laptop. I can’t think of a single occasion — not one! — where I said to myself “Gee, I wish I had Vista on this laptop.” In contrast, there have been many occasions where I’ve said “Damn, how do I do XYZ in Vista? I know how to do it in XP!”
IMHO, introducing Vista to my clients will only result in more frustrated users, more help desk calls, and more downtime. I’ve been telling my clients that one of these days they will be forced into Vista, but as long as Dell keeps selling XP pre-installed along with Vista upgrade licenses, that’s what I’m installing for my clients.
June 23rd, 2008 at 1:44 pm
For some time I’ve been noticing design decisions coming out of Microsoft that look like they were made by committee. Not just with Vista, but with other products as well.
You know how committee decisions can be. Even if someone says “hey, that’s a dumb idea”, they can be practically impossible to get back into a committee meeting and reversed. The process is highly political, and can affect careers.
Service packs will never fix this. So long as Microsoft puts its faith in nice, safe committees and focus groups, rather than smart, talented people, we’ll continue to see things that make you want to give your head a shake.
That’s not to say there are no good ideas in Vista. There are many. But Vista could have been a much better product from the start if someone could occasionally have said “That’s a dumb idea. Fix it.”
/kenw
June 24th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
It just comes down to whether there are any compelling advantages to our SMB clients in migrating their environment to Vista. Unfortuantely, with Vista Business Edition there really aren’t any. To the user, it’s basically a cosmetic upgrade, and I’m not about to push that on them.
Now, if I have a client that is replacing ALL (or at least most) of their workstations, then sure I’ll go ahead and put Vista on them. After all, since SP1 was released, I certainly don’t think Vista is any worse than XP. But when a client with 20 XP machines wants to add one or two more workstations, I’m going to lean toward maintaining platform consistency across the organization, so we’ll tend to put XP on the new ones (but make sure they’re “Vista Ready” so that down the road we’ll have the option to upgrade everything at once).
By the way, as of a few weeks ago we have been able to buy workstations from Dell with Vista Business or Ultimate OEM licenses, and Dell will pre-downgrade them to XP Pro at no charge.
Anyway, in my opinion Microsoft dropped the ball with the feature set they included in Vista Business Edition. We just don’t see and good reasons to recommend to our clients that they adopt it over XP Pro.
Now, if SBS 2008 turns out to offer a better, more productive experience to Vista users, then we’ll have a reason to revisit this. But in the mean time, we’ll be offereing XP as an option to our clients for as long as we can get it.