Vista's 'Bounce' To Add 100,000 U.S. IT Jobs, Says Report

Microsoft's Windows Vista will give a 100,000-job "bounce" to U.S. IT employment next year, a study released Monday said.

The report, which was done by research firm IDC and commissioned by Microsoft, is similar to one published in September by IDC that claimed Vista would create 50,000 new jobs in Europe. Microsoft released that report in the midst of tense negotiations with the European Union's antitrust agency over possible infringements of a 2004 ruling by Vista.

"One of the reasons why we commissioned this [new] report was because of requests from our partners," says Mike Burk, a program manager with the Vista team. U.S. partners, he says, wanted data on the impact of Vista on the overall Microsoft ecosystem.

"We wanted to show the role the role that Vista will play in the U.S. economy," Burk says.

The IDC report also estimated that the total job impact of Vista would be in the 1.8 million range over the course of 2007. The vast majority of those jobs, however, will be carryovers from earlier editions of Windows, Burk acknowledged, notably Windows XP. About 100,000 new positions will be directly related to Vista.Software and hardware partners will invest approximately $10 billion rolling out their Vista products, the IDC report said, with the figure accounting for everything from development to sales and marketing. Overall, Vista will generate $70 billion in related products and services next year, IDC said.

The operating system also will create a pass-along effect -- much like dollars spent on local tourism -- that will produce $18 in the Windows ecosystem for every dollar that Microsoft makes on Vista. The majority of that 18-1 spending will be on hardware: $9.75 for every $1 Microsoft earns. That jibes with recent reports that said that half of current business PCs won't be able to run Vista.

Unlike most other research firms, IDC predicted that Vista will quickly find its way into the enterprise. According to its estimates, Vista will account for 80% of client operating systems shipped to businesses in 2008. During 2007, Vista PCs will be installed on approximately 90 million PCs worldwide, 35 million of those in the United States.

Microsoft, and to a lesser degree IDC, have been criticized for collaborating on reports that invariably put Vista in a good light. "The methodology [used in the report] is pretty strong," Microsoft's Burk says, who declined to directly rebut critics who charge that such research is tainted. IDC's John Gantz, one of the authors of the report, did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The report, titled "The Economic Impact of Microsoft Windows Vista in the United States," can be downloaded from the Microsoft Web site as a PDF file.0