What does Vista bring to the corporate environment?

[Q]

We've (excessively) discussed why Vista rocks/sucks for the home user and, more importantly here, for the gamer, but what about for the corporate user? What features regarding maintenance, deployment, administration, security, configuration, and productivity does Vista bring to the corporate user?

I have opinions of my own, but I want to see what you folks think first. I wouldn't want to bias this more than it will be already.

[grey_1]

Much as I enjoyed using Vista HP, our IT departments have been finding way to many compatibility issues with solutions that can't easily be upgraded or ditched and swapped for another.

This is a multi-billion dollar corporation many times over mind you, that would suffer huge financial loss if things didn't go by the numbers on a daily basis.

We will be staying with XP for some time to come.

[LycosV]

IMO there is no reason for businesses to upgrade to Vista until 2008 server is out. Most of the improvements require 08 server in order to take advantage of them.

[six_storm]

I'm not in a business or anything but I think that most businesses won't bother to upgrade to Vista at all. I think XP will be the standard until "Windows 2009" or "Windows 7" comes out. Maybe and just maybe then (giving time to release and mature a little), businesses will upgrade to that.

[bacon12]

I think the one point that is in favor of business' adopting Vista is improved security. Other than that there isn't much else there to make the argument.

[Rakeesh]

New(er) businesses and upstarts will probably start from vista from the get go, unless they are buying a prebuilt/configured IT package from a vendor that does not sell vista based products yet (though most vendors like this probably have begun doing so by now.)

Most established businesses probably won't upgrade to a new version of windows until one of two things happens: They experience huge growth that requires a whole new IT system to manage, or the support lifetime of XP ends.

This is pretty much how it went from e.g. 98 to 2000, and then again from 2000 to XP.

[scott123]

I work for a large corporation. I can tell you that switching to Vista is NOT in their plans. In fact the IT folks have said they will skip Vista entirely. The problem with Vista is functionality, and the corporate world wants functionality. For the home user the "looks" is cool but the corporate world needs to perform work, and have the OS they use needs to WORK with their software. Vista in many cases will result in a complete overhaul of other software which is not an option.

Microsoft was i lala land when they developed Vista because they couldn't have possibly thought the corporate world was going to dive in.

[Revs]

I've had Vista on my home PC since it's release date, but installing it on my works PC's didn't even cross my mind. I upgraded my home rig to Vista for two reasons. 1/ It looks pretty, 2/It has DX10. (well, 3 actually, Vista 64 with 4GB of RAM).

Neither of these would be any use at work. On top of that, a few of my suppliers that use online ordering systems arn't compatable with IE7, so it would be detrimental really. As for 'security', XP's never let me down.

[Rakeesh]

I work for a large corporation. I can tell you that switching to Vista is NOT in their plans. In fact the IT folks have said they will skip Vista entirely. The problem with Vista is functionality, and the corporate world wants functionality. For the home user the "looks" is cool but the corporate world needs to perform work, and have the OS they use needs to WORK with their software. Vista in many cases will result in a complete overhaul of other software which is not an option.

Microsoft was i lala land when they developed Vista because they couldn't have possibly thought the corporate world was going to dive in.

Well, vista isn't all about looks. There are tons of back end changes that are mostly related to security, and hence the need for them to update their software if they were to switch. Think about it, you wouldn't need to update your infrastructure if you wanted to e.g. install windowblinds on some of your computers just to change the appearance.

Instead of going through all of the work of updating their software though, they want to opt for staying with what they have now, and using "band aid" security approaches that don't fix the underlying problem but do present a solution, vis-a-vis antivirus software.

Which is fine and all, the existing infrastructure is proven after all.

[LycosV]

I work for a large corporation. I can tell you that switching to Vista is NOT in their plans. In fact the IT folks have said they will skip Vista entirely. The problem with Vista is functionality, and the corporate world wants functionality. For the home user the "looks" is cool but the corporate world needs to perform work, and have the OS they use needs to WORK with their software. Vista in many cases will result in a complete overhaul of other software which is not an option.

Microsoft was i lala land when they developed Vista because they couldn't have possibly thought the corporate world was going to dive in.

That's what they say now, but if Microsoft is smart, and doesn't release another OS for another 5-7 years, they'll upgrade to Vista it's just a matter of time. Businesses work on a purchasing cycle, systems get replaced on a timed interval. If enough time passes they'll have replaced the majority of their systems with Vista machines and then they'll upgrade. It's kinda like 2000->XP. From a business perspective there weren't any real improvements, 2000 server meshed perfect with 2000 client machines. But once they have tons of machines running XP they figure what the heck and swap them all over.

I'm really surrpised that MS is so gung ho about releasing a new OS "sooner" than it took them to release Vista. You need a long enough time to make an OS get better. If you release new ones all the time you're just going to end up with A. all of them sucking, and B. people getting pissed that you're charging them full price all the time for incremental upgrades (if Mac users weren't so fanatical they'd complain like crazy about this one).

[Rakeesh]

I'm really surrpised that MS is so gung ho about releasing a new OS "sooner" than it took them to release Vista. You need a long enough time to make an OS get better. If you release new ones all the time you're just going to end up with A. all of them sucking, and B. people getting pissed that you're charging them full price all the time for incremental upgrades (if Mac users weren't so fanatical they'd complain like crazy about this one).

2000 to XP was about 20 months.

[vandalous]

Much as I enjoyed using Vista HP, our IT departments have been finding way to many compatibility issues with solutions that can't easily be upgraded or ditched and swapped for another.

This is a multi-billion dollar corporation many times over mind you, that would suffer huge financial loss if things didn't go by the numbers on a daily basis.

We will be staying with XP for some time to come.

+1. When you have several hundred thousand users spread out over the globe, it's a bit challenging to support them. We just went to XP not that long ago and that forced a ton of internal app changes. No Vista here for many moons.

[fugu_fish]

We are being forced onto Vista in early 2008. The Air Force in partnership with Microsoft has developed a "Standard Desktop Configuration" in an attempt to standardize software configuration across the enterprise. It largely works although the "one size fits all" approach falls down sometimes and our IT guys spend a lot of time fixing driver problems.

Anyway, the AF is pushing Vista down in early 2008. We dread it because we still have machines kicking around with 256 and 512MB of ram!

[Tr1cK]

We dread it because we still have machines kicking around with 256 and 512MB of ram!

good luck with all that

[Sidric]

We are being forced onto Vista in early 2008. The Air Force in partnership with Microsoft has developed a "Standard Desktop Configuration" in an attempt to standardize software configuration across the enterprise. It largely works although the "one size fits all" approach falls down sometimes and our IT guys spend a lot of time fixing driver problems.

Anyway, the AF is pushing Vista down in early 2008. We dread it because we still have machines kicking around with 256 and 512MB of ram!

lol, makes me glad that I'm getting out soon.