I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
Vista is going to have a huge impact on us IT people over the next few years. I haven’t played with Vista enough to know if it is good or bad. I’m not passing judgement (yet).
My observation is that for Vista to be adopted the following hurdles need to be crossed.
- That Enterprises and Home Users refresh their hardware
- That Enterprises will take the training hit for the new user experience
- That there are compelling features that Enterprises will use that provide a return on the massive investment required for items 1 & 2 above.
I just don’t see it.
For example …the consensus of our team was that Vista really needs 2GB of RAM to get the intended experience. I priced a Sony laptop today. I would have to throw out the 512 memory stick that comes with the device and pay another $NZ800 for 2GB. The industry and consumers are just not ready for it .
What business benefit does this new platform provide? Well what do most Enterprise and home people do? Email, Web, Word. It is hard to build a business case around those. So if I was a CIO would I upgrade?
No. In fact, No way.
CIO’s can’t blindly accept the ‘you have to upgrade to the new version’ mantra anymore. The ROI no longer stacks up. This is new. We’ve never had this before.
How has this happened? Could it be as simple that the strategists inside Microsoft were so insular they didn’t look over the walls and check the first two assumptions above? By designing a new platform like Vista they have created a huge continuity gap and opened the door for alternatives.
Further, as the software has got more complex, there are some disturbing examples of lack of coordination. Outlook and OneNote do not have the new Office look and feel. How could that have been allowed to happen? Did they not have enough time?
Where does that leave us? Well the impact must be things like …
- We’re going to see a massive spread in technology between developers on the edge and real Enterprise customers.
- Microsoft partners are going to re-evaluate their strategies of how they work with Microsoft. Do they create leading edge applications that use the new features to pull through the platform, OR, create products that leverage existing platform investments. i.e. extend the life of Enterprise XP. Partners that bet wrong will go out of business.
- Vista forces a tough upgrade and relearn decision for Enterprise and home users. Microsoft are letting go of your hand and giving you a choice. This levels the playing field for alternatives like Apple.
- Investments in WinForms based applications look risky. What do you target? Web delivery of platform independent applications look compelling.
- Bits of Vista technology will be pulled back to XP potentially leading to DLL and Rollout hell. What is a standard build?
Vista and the chasms it creates will change the established rules of our industry. This is big as we pick our strategies and investment areas for the next 5 years.
Good or bad the Vista phenomena creates gaps and therefore opportunities for the quick movers. There is risk for established players if they don’t modify their strategies.
Never a better time to be in software.
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