Among the raft of recent and upcoming Microsoft upgrades,
Windows 8 towers in importance but its chances for success remain cloudy among
enterprise customers.
While Windows 8 is getting automatically pushed onto new PCs
and tablets to consumers, its acceptance in the enterprise is expected to be a
tougher sell. Most enterprises have either recently upgraded from XP to Windows
7 or are in the process of doing so, and thus unlikely to embark again so soon
on another OS refresh, according to various surveys.
It was on the strength of its dominant OS position on
desktops and laptops that Microsoft built its successful product portfolio for
enterprises, including client-side applications like Outlook, Word, Excel and
PowerPoint and server-side software like SQL Server, SharePoint and Exchange.
As the company worked furiously throughout most of 2012 to
put the finishing touches on Windows 8, the sense of urgency among its
executives was evident, given the anemic share of Windows 7 on tablets, devices
which have become tremendously popular not only among consumers but also in
workplaces. With Windows 8, which sports a radically different interface
optimized for touchscreens, CEO Steve Ballmer and his generals expect Microsoft
to significantly improve its share of tablet OSes. In the past two years or so,
droves of people have brought to work their personal iOS and Android
smartphones and tablets and Windows has a minuscule share of those markets. As
with Windows 8 in tablets, Microsoft has high hopes for Windows Phone 8 to
improve its smartphone OS sales.
But so far, Windows 8 has gotten mixed reviews, and industry
analysts, Microsoft partners and customers remain divided on their expectations
for success of the new OS.
Mark Newton, vice president of operations at TeleMate.Net
Software, a Microsoft Certified Partner that makes an Internet filter appliance
for businesses called NetSpective, calls the new Windows 8 touch-optimized
interface "annoying" and "unintuitive." He refers to the
new interface's Live Tiles icons as "big square blotches on the
screen" that "don't make efficient use of the desktop space."
The interface, he said, is clearly for tablets. "It
doesn't play well in the desktop."
And while Windows 8 also has an alternate interface that
more closely resembles the traditional Windows 7 desktop, Newton is also
unimpressed by it. He dislikes that it doesn't have the Start button, and that
it doesn't offer Windows 7's familiar menu system.
He would have been less irritated if Microsoft had made it
possible for IT administrators to set the traditional desktop as the main,
default interface in their company's PCs, but that isn't an option.
At TeleMate.Net, he put Windows 8 on a couple of tech-savvy
employees' PCs and they quickly requested to be switched back to Windows 7.
"They said to put Windows 7 back in there because they had to use their
computers."
TeleMate.Net has Windows 8 on the machines of a few
developers who are working to tweak the NetSpective software for the new OS,
but the company will keep the other 20 or so other employees on Windows 7.
"I'm not going to push Windows 8 out to everyone's
desktop until there's a valid and compelling reason to do so, and right now it
doesn't exist. Windows 7 is very stable, very robust," he said.
He would have made the same decision at his previous job,
where he held a similar position, but oversaw about 5,000 end users.
"There's no way I would have ever agreed to deploy
Windows 8 to 5,000 desktops and then have to go and figure out how to explain
to people how to use the new interface and train them," he said.
In other places, Windows 8 is getting a warmer reception,
including by early adopters Seton Hall University, British Telecom and the
Emirates airline.
"Windows 8 is great for business because it delivers
the experiences people love while providing organizations with the IT controls
they require," said Jason Campbell, a Microsoft senior product manager.
"Many organizations across a wide variety of industries
are taking advantage of Windows 8," he added.
At CB Engineers in San Francisco, IT Director Jack Mou plans
to replace all company laptops -- about 15 -- with Windows 8 tablets and
laptops next year, displacing also a number of iPads employees bring from home.
But although Mou considers Windows 8 superior to its
predecessor, he concluded that on the desktop it doesn't offer enough
improvements to warrant upgrading from Windows 7.
"For the desktop deployment, unless otherwise requiring
touchscreen and [stylus] pen inputs, I don't find it necessary to upgrade if
you are already on Windows 7," he said via e-mail.
Of course, Microsoft begs to differ. Part of its massive
marketing effort for Windows 8 has focused on convincing enterprises to adopt
the new OS.
Microsoft has trumpeted improvements in security,
virtualization, backup/restore, performance and IT management. For example,
Windows To Go lets users boot and run Windows 8 from USB devices like flash
drives. The OS also offers simpler ways for end users to manage their Wi-Fi and
cellular broadband connections.
At TechEd North America in June, Antoine Leblond, corporate
VP of Windows Web Services, declared Windows 8 "enterprise-ready by
design" and "a better Windows" than Windows 7.
Still, the lack of enthusiasm for Windows 8 on desktop PCs
expressed by Mou and Newton is consistent with what IT analyst firms have heard
from customers.
"Overall, most organizations will look at Windows 8 for
specific users and scenarios, and not for broad deployments," said Michael
Silver, a Gartner analyst.
For example, a company may choose Windows 8 for a new fleet
of tablets, or to refresh their laptop fleet with new Windows 8
"hybrids" that have touchscreens as well as keyboards, trackpads and
mice.
Forrester Research recently said that the interest level
among IT decision makers for Windows 8 is about half of what it was for Windows
7 in the third quarters of 2012 and 2009, respectively. (Both products shipped
in late October, three years apart.)
The Forrester findings are based on surveys of IT decision
makers in Europe and North America, in which 24 percent of respondents polled
in 2012 said they expected to migrate to Windows 8 at some point, while 49
percent had given a similar answer about Windows 7 in 2009.
"IT decision makers are expressing concern about the
new UI, because they believe it's going to require new training and additional
support to get people used to it," said David Johnson, a Forrester
analyst.
TeleMate.Net's Newton concurs. "Any large-scale
deployment of Windows 8 is going to have a negative impact on productivity in
the business world, because people will be spinning their wheels trying to
figure out how to do this, how to do that," he said.
In addition, the security, manageability and performance
enhancements in Windows 8 are notable, but not enough to prompt enterprises to
embark on a broad desktop upgrade right after moving from XP to Windows 7,
Forrester's Johnson said.
Even in cases where an enterprise will consider Windows 8
specifically for a tablet rollout, IT managers need to consider certain issues
with the new OS. For starters, it's a bigger, heavier OS than iOS and Android,
so Windows 8 tablets will generally consume more resources, and thus may be
bulkier, costlier and more battery hungry, he said.
"I'm not sure that's a tradeoff tablet buyers are
willing to make," Johnson said.
Windows RT, the Windows 8 version designed for lighter,
smaller ARM-based devices, isn't as enterprise friendly as the standard Windows
8 for x86 Intel and AMD machines.
For example, Windows RT can't run existing applications for
Windows 7 and older Windows versions; it can only run new applications built
for it and offered via the new Windows Store.
Also, while Windows RT comes with its own version of Office,
the suite isn't licensed for business use. Plus, the Outlook e-mail client
software ubiquitous in enterprises can't be installed on Windows RT machines.
Windows RT also lacks many IT management tools and features present in Windows
8.
IT managers also need to carefully review their business
applications, and whether their vendors are supporting them on Windows 8,
Gartner's Silver said.
Yes, applications built for Windows 7 should work on Windows
8 for x86, but just because a Windows 7 application runs on Windows 8 doesn't
automatically mean that the application vendor will offer customers support for
it if something goes wrong while using it on the new OS, Silver said.
In particular, IT managers must be aware that the only IE browser
that runs on Windows 8 is the new IE 10, so any applications that currently
depend on earlier versions need to be tested, he said.
While Windows 7 applications are supposed to run on the
traditional Windows 8 desktop, Silver predicts that many third-party software
vendors will not rush to port their applications to the new Windows 8
interface.
"In supporting the new interface is where you'll see
application vendors drag their feet because today, especially in the
enterprise, there is no big audience for those applications yet," he said.
Still, some application developers are jumping at the
opportunity of creating Windows 8 applications for tablets. Toyota Racing
Development, Toyota's motor sports arm in North America, is reworking a Windows
7 application called Trackside.
This application is designed to help NASCAR racing teams
affiliated with Toyota to sharpen their performance on the track, especially
during practice sessions, by recording lap times, plotting graphs and
generating comparisons with competitors.
For that reason, it will be much more effective when
deployed on smaller, touchscreen tablets as opposed to in regular laptops like
it is today, said Darren Jones, group lead of software development at Toyota
Racing Development.
"The driver can now sit in the car with all safety
equipment on and mine through the data, put in his own input on how the car is
handling and give it to the crew chief," Jones said.
The application, which is exclusively for Toyota racing
partners and is thus not commercially sold, was tested towards the end of this
year's Nascar season and is expected to be finished by the time the next season
starts, he said.
As 2012 draws to a close, Windows 8 is engaged in its own
race. It's crucial for Microsoft that Windows 8 give the company a presence in
the tablet market, and in particular among enterprises.
Tablet sales ignited with the release of the first iPad in
2010, roughly six months after Windows 7 came out. At the same time, PC sales
have shrunk. In the third quarter, worldwide unit shipments dropped 8.6 percent
year-on-year, a drop IDC called "severe" and attributed to market
pressure from tablets and smartphones.
Gartner forecasts worldwide media tablet sales to end users
to total 119 million units in 2012, up 98 percent compared with 2011. Gartner
expects Apple's iOS to continue its dominance with a projected share of over 61
percent. Windows is expected to ship in only 4.8 million tablets this year.
Microsoft is so focused on improving its position in the
tablet OS market that it's risking angering its hardware partners by selling
its own Surface device both with Windows RT and soon with Windows 8.
"We truly re-imagined Windows, and we kicked off a new
era for Microsoft, and a new era for our customers," Ballmer said during
the Windows 8 launch event in late October.
Later, he said: "Our enterprise customers will also
love the new Windows 8 devices."
As the year ends, 2013 will provide a clearer view into
Windows 8's acceptance in the enterprise and into its chances of success and
failure there, and whether it will be for Microsoft an era characterized by
success or disappointment.
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