Daily Spin: Fear, Dread and Vista Delays

The Big Picture

Fear and Dread and Vista Delays

Yogi Berra said it best: "It's like deja vu all over again."

That's really the only way to describe a Microsoft OS shipment delay, which has come now to be an almost expected occurrence, it seems. That doesn't make it any easier to swallow, for Microsoft or for IT managers.In case you missed it, Microsoft announced this week it would delay shipment of consumer versions of Windows Vista until January. Business users, however, are expected to get access to the next-generation OS as planned in November.

I don't imagine our IT readers are breathing any easier, however.

Maybe we should have seen trouble brewing on the horizon when Microsoft announced all those different versions of Vista. Was that "market segmentation" strategy really the first steps in a "delay-to-market" tactic? Probably not. But shipping six different versions of Vista, now on a staggered schedule, is sure to confuse everyone, from end users to enterprises.

Most enterprises serious about Vista already have early access versions of the OS in-house and under heavy scrutiny. And by most accounts, there's a lot to like in the new OS for enterprises, including better built-in security and improved capabilities for running legacy and non-Windows applications.But it's hard to repress a nagging sense of fear and dread -- now inflamed by the latest delays -- that any transition to Vista, whether it be for enterprises, end-users or even Microsoft itself, has the potential to be a painful one.

NWC's Take on the News

Here's what we think of today's breaking news. Read the story and leave your own comment. Let's see if we agree ; >

Eclipse Expands, Urges Shift Away From Windows User InterfaceEclipse Rich Client Platform offers developers a way to build user interfaces that run across Windows, Mac, and Linux desktops.

NWC's Take: Popular in the Java space, Eclipse group now pushes AJAX-type interfaces as an alternative to Windows UI.

Google's Privacy Win Could Be Pyrrhic VictoryGoogle won what will likely be just the first battle in a continuing war over requests for its search information.

NWC's Take:

Battle only gets larger as Google and competitors suck more of our lives into their vast databases.

EDS Latest Tech Giant to Increase Offshore HiringThe Dallas-based provider of IT and BPO services plans to double its staff in Hungary, where it currently employs about 1,100 workers.NWC's Take:Service provider follows IBM, Dell and others, but makes a detour on the usual path to Southeast Asia stopping instead in Eastern Europe.

IBM Debuts SOA Governance HelpCustomers can choose from about 40 IBM products to help invoke, manage, and reuse Web services and set overall policies for service-oriented architectures.

NWC's Take:Smart move, as service oriented architectures aren't really a product or even a service, but an approach to building new computing and application architectures. Sounds like a potential cash cow for IBM services group.

From the NWC Blogs

Podcast: Sudden Impact

Join NWC's convergence expert David Greenfield as he talks with the leading experts from Avaya, Microsoft, the Burton Group, and the Yankee Group on the impact real-time and non-real time collaboration technologies will have on the enterprise.

Experts:

Listen the the podcast now: Sudden Impact (.mp3 link)