There is certainly rather a little of distinction of opinion as to when and no matter whether company customers should upgrade to Windows Vista, but Workplace 2007 isn;t affected by the exact same fate.
Based on Forrester Analysis (which has definitely been cranking out the research inside the past couple of days), businesses are deploying Workplace 2007 at a speedy clip. Much more than forty percent of the 259 IT decision makers in North The us and Western Europe that Forrester surveyed already have deployed Workplace 2007.
“The adoption of Workplace 2007 appears a lot healthier than what people thought,” said Kyle McNabb,
Windows 7 Enterprise 64, principal researcher for the study. “Lots of enterprises are adopting it with Service Pack 1.”
Other findings from Forrester;s “The State Of Microsoft Office 2007 Desktop Adoption” study (which is only available to subscribers to Forrester;s analysis service): The majority of those surveyed plan to deploy Workplace 2007 within the next 12 months (21 percent immediately,
Buy Windows 7 Starter, 43 percent inside 6 months and 29 % inside 12 months)
SharePoint Server 2007 is being deployed at almost identical rates and often in tandem with Workplace 2007.
Of those surveyed, 43 % said Office 2007 rollouts were tied to upgrades in PC hardware
*The release of Workplace 2007 SP1 “removed a hurdle keeping many from moving forward in calendar year 2007.” Based on conventional wisdom, many companies prefer to deploy new versions of Windows and Workplace at the identical time to reduce costs associated with upgrading to a new release. With Windows Vista and Office 2007, however,
Windows 7 Professional 64, that rule doesn;t seem to be holding true. As part of the findings of a different survey released earlier this week,
Cheap Office 2007 Key, Forrester has found organization adoption of Vista to be sluggish, with adoption of Vista by enterprises growing “slightly far more than five percentage points during 2007 to end at 6.3%.
(Microsoft doesn;t break out for public consumption the percentage of Vista sales that have gone to businesses vs. consumers.)
I asked McNabb whether any IT pros surveyed as part of this study expressed any ambivalence about waiting for Office 14 vs. upgrading to Office 2007. After all,
Cheap Windows 7 Home Basic, Workplace 14 is still rumored to be a 2009 release. McNabb said those who were weighing this choice were “quite substantially in the minority,” a fact he attributed to “Microsoft telling many customers not to expect major changes inside the desktop with Workplace 14.”
And what about Google Apps? Any IT pros surveyed looking critically at a completely Google-hosted alternative to Workplace 2007?
“Enterprises are looking at Open Workplace and Google, but they are not yet looking to move to them,” McNabb said. “Less than one percent are giving any real fuel to (Microsoft) alternatives.”