Mountain View (CA) – Microsoft painted a rosy picture of increasing Windows Vista demand during its most recent quarter conference call, but the reality may look different, if the results of a survey of systems management appliance is somewhat correct: Apparently, six out of ten IT Managers have no plans to replace an older Windows operating system with Vista and almost all say that the recently released Service Pack 1 did not change their opinion and almost half of respondents said that they may be considering other operating systems as alternatives to Windows Vista. Is Microsoft gambling the huge enterprise client market away?

A few days ago, we learned that Microsoft has sold 180 million Vista retail boxes, OEM licenses and enterprise licenses so far. Sure, it is a stunning number by any measure and it is still high enough to make any other company out there jealous. But the reported sales numbers raised questions of possibly declining growth, which especially appear to originate from enterprise license sales.

It is no secret that Windows Vista has had a less than great start with the enterprise and that it has a tough time convincing IT managers of its advantages over Windows XP. New survey results released by Kace, a systems management appliance company, now indicates that the perception of Windows Vista among IT managers is pretty much set and that Microsoft’s sales force will have to work harder to get Vista into enterprise environments.

60% of 1162 U.S. IT administrators surveyed said that they have “no plans” of deploying Vista. This number is 7% higher than the result of Kace’s November 2007 survey.  The heavily promoted Service Pack 1 has not changed their opinion, with 92% of respondents stating that the update has not changed their plans for Vista deployment. 83% said that they are concerned about the compatibility of required business software with Vista, 65% said it is challenging to obtain the expertise needed to manage multiple operating systems and 41% of the respondents reported it is challenging to secure multiple operating systems.     

The dissatisfaction with Windows Vista is apparently enough to make IT administrators think twice about the deployment of a future Windows operating system. Kace found that 42% of IT administrator respondents said they would consider deployment of alternative operating systems, such as Mac OS and Linux, in order to avoid a migration to Vista. The survey results showed the Mac operating system as the most likely alternative operating system to be deployed, the company said.

“The second version of the Vista Adoption Trends survey clearly demonstrates Microsoft is still fighting an uphill battle with Vista and the release of Vista Service Pack 1 did little to change corporate opinion about the operating system,” said Diane Hagglund of King Research, which conducted the survey for Kace. “These same IT departments are evaluating alternative methods to stave off Vista deployment with many moving to the Mac operating system instead. This brings up a whole new set of challenges related to managing heterogeneous environments and compounds the importance of systems management devices that deliver a single interface for diverse operating systems.”