Windows 7's beta and release candidate have gotten almost nothing but positive press, but I wasn't expecting many businesses to upgrade immediately. After all, IT departments are seeing decreased spending and while Windows 7 looks great, it doesn't have many features that seem, to me at least, like immediate must-haves. And many IT pros don't like to deploy any OS before the first service pack.
But ScriptLogic's survey surprised me.
- When asked about their plans to deploy Windows 7.0, nearly 60 percent (59.2) of respondents said they have no plans to deploy at this time; 34 percent plan to deploy by the end of 2010 and only 5.4 percent plan to deploy quickly following scheduled general availability in October 2009, by the end of 2009.
- IT administrators note the biggest barriers to deploying Windows 7.0 as lack of time and resources (42.4 percent) and application compatibility (38.9 percent), followed by OS deployment/migration (8.8 percent), hardware support (7.6 percent) and migration of users settings (3.2 percent).
A ScriptLogic representative told me these figures might reflect small and midsized businesses more than enterprises.
Forty percent seems big to me. My best guess for the large number is that many companies skipped Windows Vista and are eager for improvements on Windows XP, which is coming up on its eighth birthday. For shops that skipped Vista, the upgrade to Windows 7 will bring both the features new in Vista and the new Windows 7 features. Together, these two sets of features seem to add up to a pretty compelling argument for an early upgrade.
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