With an estimated 90 million copies of Microsoft Windows Vista expected to be installed by the end of 2007, one might wonder how many will be on machines in the business sector. With all of its bells and whistles, is it the best OS for the enterprise? To find out, we spoke with five randomly selected Microsoft Gold Partners. Each of these company representatives has his finger on the pulse of the current use of Vista, and insight into when it will achieve acceptance across the enterprise.

Hardware Is Key

Hardware requirements are an issue whenever a new operating system will is to be deployed, and most of our VARs had the same answer: vendors are not ready to make the jump to both a new OS and new hardware at the same time. "We see that when Microsoft says that you need 1 GB of RAM as your minimum, they're just wrong," says Neil Pearlstein, executive vice president sales and marketing, of Oakland CA-based PC Professional. "The machine will run extremely slowly unless you have a minimum of 2 GB." Doug Ford, President and CEO of El Cajon, CA's The I.T. Pros agrees that the stated minimum RAM requirement is unrealistic. "Internally, we've found that 1 GB is sufficient, but a 2 GB recommendation is where we want to be with our customers. We don't want to put them in a place where they're not receiving the level of performance that they expect."

Christopher Stark, president and CEO of Vienna, VA-based Cetrom Information Technology Inc., agrees that the hardware costs can be considerable, especially in larger companies. "Vista was designed with the idea that hardware prices had come down," he says. "Unfortunately, in the case of most of my clients, the standard rule of thumb is that you replace a PC every three years. They have to decide whether to upgrade their hardware just to get this new operating system. They have to decide what this new operating system is really going to give them that's different than XP. It's very demanding on hardware, and doesn't provide a tremendous amount of benefit - at least that we're aware of at this point."

Scott Putnam, president and CEO of Redding, CA-based Apex Technology Management Inc., says that his company typically installs Vista on new PCs, so it adds $1,000-$1,500 to the upgrade. Gordon Dunkley, solutions group leader for the enterprise desktop for Chicago, IL-based Project Leadership Associates, says that clients typically either need to replace their machines or upgrade components. "You're going to see some machines that already qualify and are Vista capable, and others that you can upgrade to make them Vista capable. The newer machines will already be capable, but with the older machines, you often have to upgrade the memory or the hard drive."

Software: Is Compatibility An Issue?

All of the VARs that we spoke with found some type of software incompatibilities that would be a challenge for their clients. Number one on the list was Citrix, though problems with apps from Hummingbird, Adobe, and even Microsoft (Office) were reported. Missing drivers for important hardware like SonicWall and printers were also noted.

For Ford's customers, problems with Internet Explorer 7 were a particular sore spot. "We've had Java compatibility issues, and we've had browser compatibility issues from some pretty big players," he says. "Typically, they're applications where our customers are using some sort of a software service application. For example, we deal with a lot of financial firms that use SchwabLink and Reuters and all kinds of web-based applications. IE 7 is not supported. The vendors realize that they have to make a change to support Vista and IE 7, but they're not there yet." Stark feels that Microsoft didn't give vendors enough time to get ready for the new OS. "In my opinion, Vista just came out of nowhere. Few of the major players in the industry were ready for this release."