Vista in the Enterprise

Posted by Joe Hernick on March 16, 2007

There've been way too many bad puns at the expense of Microsoft's new desktop OS, so we'll keep the gallows humor to a minimum. But let's be clear: Eventually, all our Windows machines will run Vista. That includes the 38 percent of respondents to our reader poll who said they have no plans to upgrade.

What's that, you say? Why deploy an absolute resource hog of a desktop OS when the trend for custom solutions is toward Web-based applications?

Short, paranoid answer: Because most of us will have no choice, as the vast, bloated hardware-software conspiracy keeps rolling along.

The elephant in the boardroom is that Vista is designed for home users seeking snazzy multimedia features to make their Windows boxes more Mac-like. Beefed up security in the form of BitLocker and User Account Control are being used as hooks to haul enterprises along for the ride and, to be fair, it does look like Vista's native security is tighter than XP's--for now.

READ MORE

Tutorial: How To Plan Your Vista Deployment

But think about it from a functional standpoint: Didn't Windows 95 do pretty much everything your business needed? Interim OS upgrades had easily identifiable payoffs that made migrating worthwhile. Moving to XP brought network-management capabilities, granular Active Directory control and other new goodies.

Can we say the same for Vista? According to our readers, not really. As a whole, they say there are no business drivers behind the move to Vista. But sooner or later, we'll be running it anyway. The only question is, when?

For small businesses, the hardware-refresh cycle dictates timing--most of these folks will simply end up with Vista preinstalled on shiny new machines. Migration becomes significantly more complicated as organizations get bigger and more complex. Gartner says most companies will spend 18 months planning, testing and piloting Vista, but our reader poll says that's an optimistic assessment. Only 23 percent of respondents expect to have Vista rolled out within 24 months. Eight percent say timing hinges on Service Pack releases, while 18 percent will upgrade piecemeal to replace retired PCs. The rest? They're in no hurry, thanks very much. (View the complete NWC Poll at nwc.com/go/vista_gallery.)

Even for motivated IT shops, migration timelines are dependent on overcoming the inertia of an installed base. True business drivers (or lack thereof), the political strength of IT, and business partners promoting migration will be more important than security advances, tech specs and Aero's bells and whistles. If you're sitting with a large entrenched XP base running diverse hardware and you haven't begun detailed planning, realistically, there's no way you should expect to roll out Vista for at least 20 months (see "13 Steps to Vista" in the image gallery).

Site assessment, hardware limitations, migration tools, application compatibility issues, user training, infrastructure concerns, staffing models, custom development tools, capital costs and TCO, design and deployment philosophies--the laundry list of considerations and worry points could fill an IRS training manual.

Now that we've spiked your blood pressure, take a deep breath. We've got something for everyone--edgy early adopters gazing at Aero through rose-tinted shades, small businesses whose budget future is foggy, hardy Windows 2000 shops straining to see the horizon, even you poor bastards whose world views show nothing but thunderclouds and rain. Besides polling your peers, we interviewed folks in the trenches and talked high-end strategy with reps from Redmond and supporting vendors.

Continue Reading This Story...

RELATED LINKS Where Are Operating Systems Headed? (Few) Ways Vista Makes Office Work Better Windows Vista's 90-Day Report Card	IMAGE GALLERY Click image to view gallery
NWC REPORTS Death. Taxes. Vista Download this feature as a PDF, including the full results of our in-depth reader poll.	AROUND THE WEB Microsoft Windows Vista Upgrade Planning The Windows Vista Blog Microsoft Windows Vista Hardware Design

Once Bitten

The often-painful move to NT/Win2K and the long-tailed adoption of XP on the desktop has left many IT managers and businesses weary, and wary of change.

Much of this grief stemmed from poor migration utilities and lack of guidance from on high. Manu Namboodiri, a senior product manager with Microsoft's Windows Client division, admits that past migration tools were "thrown over the wall" to customers in an ad hoc manner. Namboodiri told us that Microsoft is looking to change its stripes this time around, partnering with systems integrators and third-party tool vendors.

There are now more utilities, more standards, more how-to guides and more published assistance than with any past Windows upgrade. Our review of resource-planning guides indicates that Microsoft has, in fact, gone the extra mile in the self-help arena. Small organizations with limited planning experience will benefit most, while large shops can use planning tools, templates and checklists to vet their existing migration strategies.

It's been built, but will you come?

"We're a small organization; we want to move forward quickly, but we need to keep our costs down," says BJ Daniels, director of technology at The Gunnery, an independent school in Washington, Conn. "We'll rely on Microsoft's toolset as much as we can for our rollout."

That's music to Redmond's ears. The company is betting improved migration support and active customer outreach will encourage more shops to move to Vista sooner rather than later. Earlier this month, Microsoft revised its Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) strategy, a deployment-advice application (for more on BDD, see nwc.com/go/BDD.jhtml). Although third-party research and our survey data suggest most IT pros hold a "wait-and-see" outlook, Namboodiri assures us that a number of Fortune 100 companies are taking the plunge--he cites Citigroup and a large petroleum company that are actively and aggressively deploying Vista across their enterprises.

Cost Matters

Vista's real lifetime cost per seat is significantly higher than the incremental cost of hardware bits and a new OS license or upgrade. Additional bottom-line considerations include application remediation and testing expenses; resource hours for planning, prep and migration; end-user training costs; and an indeterminate productivity impact as employees take on the new UI.

And, as it turns out, hardware costs may be a good bit higher than originally thought.

Vista's minimum specs should not be underestimated: While Vista "Starter" for emerging markets holds the bar pretty low, at 800 MHz, 512 MB of RAM and SVGA capability, most U.S. firms will implement Vista Business or Vista Enterprise. Vista Business is analogous to XP Pro and is targeted at SMBs, while Enterprise offers add-ons such as BitLocker, enhanced Unix subsystems, increased language support and application-compatibility tools. Most recently purchased machines will run these flavors of the new OS--but they won't necessarily run them well.