The Adoption
A mixed reaction emerged from a cross section of large enterprises Dataquest talked to. There is no denying that the new system that will be shipped will come bundled with new software, but it is the large base of Windows XP users who have shown reluctance to hurry for any major upgrade. According to Alagu Balaraman, executive vice president, Information Technology & Corporate Development, Godfrey Phillips India, "I am not looking at upgrading to Vista in the immediate future. We have a standard refresh cycle and every year one percent of the machines get changed in any case. We will follow this model rather than spending additional money at this point on upgrading all the hardware. All the new systems that are being brought are shipping with Vista."

All reports emerging from global markets suggest a not-so hurried adoption by enterprises. Talking about CIO strategy for Vista adoption, Accenture CIO, Frank B Modruson says, "The key thing for a CIO is to set expectation with the business and the user community and make a decision. CIOs should have a point of view on any new product that is available in the market place."

Even for the consumer version, which was launched recently, there are similar sentiments. According to a recent Forrester Research, households will adopt Vista much the same way that they adopted Windows XP. This is against Microsoft projections that Vista will be adopted two times faster than any other Windows client OS. According to estimates, Windows XP took more than four years to reach a critical mass and there is a feeling that Vista might take the same time. But Rishi Srivastava, director, Windows Client Business Group, Microsoft India feels otherwise: "While it's still early to predict any numbers, we do expect that in the first year customers will adopt Windows Vista far faster than they adopted Windows XP. Broadly, we anticipate that in about three years, the migration to the newer version should be complete." Exuding confidence, Rishi Srivastava says, "We believe that Windows Vista will see the largest and fastest adoption in the history of any operating system we've shipped." He thinks that enterprise customers will migrate to Vista in three years' time.

According to Jeremy Burton, group president of the enterprise security and data management business unit, Symantec, "My thinking is that large enterprises will wait and watch and will make the move on Vista in the next 12-24 months. But the consumers will be more aggressive because they are buying more PCs."

Microsoft Strategy
Microsoft is, however, upbeat and has a clear-cut strategy to tap both the markets. According to Rishi Srivastava of Microsoft India, "We definitely see both-upgradation and new deployment happening. New PCs shipping in India post January 2007 are pre-loaded with Windows Vista. Additionally, we have been working with enterprise customers through the Vista TAP (Technology Adoption Program) and RDP (Rapid Deployment Program) and these customers based on their early experience, are very keen to roll out Vista. Customers are very focused on reducing costs of their IT environment and increasing security while still enhancing the productivity of information workers and enabling their mobile workforce.

"The key thing for a CIO is to set expectations with the business and the user community and make a decision. CIOs should have a point of view on any new product that is available in the market place"
-Frank B Modruson, CIO, Accenture
"I am not looking at upgrading to Vista in the immediate future. We have a standard refresh cycle and every year one percent of the machines get changed"
-Alagu Balaraman, executive VP, IT & Corporate Development, Godfrey Phillips India
"While it's still early to predict any numbers, we do expect that in the first year customers will adopt Windows Vista far faster than they adopted Windows XP. Broadly, we anticipate that in about 3 years, the migration to the newer version should be complete"
Rishi Srivastava, director, Windows Client Business Group, Microsoft India

The Outlook
From an enterprise perspective, it is expected that larger enterprises will go for it more than the SMB segment due to cost and other factors. SMBs will wait and watch till the hype around Vista subsides. Enterprises using XP or those who have recently upgraded to XP will think twice before investing in Microsoft. Probably realizing the importance of educating customers after launching the product, Microsoft recently kicked off a road show covering seven major cities to educate customers and partners on this significant product. It has partnered with Intel, AMD, EMC, Nortel, Wipro, Kingston and Sonata for these education initiatives covered cities including Hyderabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata and Chennai.

Source: Dataquest