Computer Business Review (CBRonline.com) found in a survey of 300 senior decision-makers in the UK that 2% of enterprises had already upgraded their desktops to Windows Vista.
Those numbers are consistent with how we would see it so far in our core markets like the US, UK, and so on, Curran said.
Curran noted that since its launch on January 30 last year, Microsoft has shipped over 100 million copies of Vista worldwide. He said the firm expects another surge of companies going from the testing to deployment phase as the company gears up to launch Vista Service Pack 1 sometime this quarter.
Curran also said Microsoft is very happy with current adoption levels. The migration to Vista has been faster than we saw with the migration to XP, he said. The decision to migrate their desktops from XP to Vista is a big decision, and we appreciate that. We are committed to having all the tools available to help in that migration, and all the information necessary that makes it an informed decision, and as smooth as possible.
Curran said the company is seeing a lot of excitement from its customers about upgrading to Vista, with more and more companies moving to upgrade. He said various toolkits designed to ease the migration for enterprises are being downloaded in great numbers as companies gear up for the switchover.
For example, he said the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit that helps companies evaluate and mitigate application compatibility issues before deploying Vista, a Windows Update, or a new version of Internet Explorer, has already seen over 300,000 downloads.
Curran said that as a result of the launch of Vista SP1, Microsoft expects to see more activity in our (financial) second half, which for Microsoft runs from January to June.
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As we reported earlier this week, Curran acknowledged that some corporate customers in particular have been waiting for the launch of Vista SP1 before they upgrade from Windows XP. The launch of the first service pack does tend to be a key motivator (for enterprises to upgrade), he said.
Late last year Microsoft announced that it would extend the shelf life of Windows XP by another five months, allowing resellers to stock the product until June 30 this year, as it seems some buyers are still opting for XP.
Mike Nash, Microsoft Windows product manager, is reported to have said: Maybe we were a little ambitious to think that we would need to make Windows XP available for only a year after the release of Windows Vista.
However, while XP won’t in theory be on sale after June, mainstream support for Windows XP Professional is not scheduled to end until April 2009.
