How Windows Vista Will Shake Up The State Of The Enterprise Operating System

Desktop operations managers have been focused on one objective for their corporate operating system (OS) environment: standardization. And they've been largely successful, according to Forrester's most recent hardware survey, with 84% of PCs in North American and European enterprises powered by Windows XP and just 11% running Windows 2000. But this is all about to change. Enterprises are about to begin large-scale migrations to Windows Vista. OS migrations are massive projects that take years, and Windows Vista will be no exception. IT will have to work hard to continue to standardize the OS environment during the final Windows Vista preparations, and continue to manage dual OSes as pilots mature into full-scale deployments. Forrester expects at least one-third of enterprises to begin to deploy Windows Vista enterprisewide by mid-2008 as more applications will be certified, hardware will be refreshed and ready to run Windows Vista smoothly, and price points will make compatible machines more affordable than they are today.