Microsoft to biz: Start Windows 7 migrations now
The company promises a much smoother transition than the one to Windows Vista
In a last promotional run-up to the Windows 7 release next month, Microsoft is urging business customers to start their upgrades now with examples of customers already using the software, and another acknowledgment that the company learned lessons from how it handled Vista's release three years ago.
Microsoft has devoted an unprecedented level of time and attention to making sure business customers will have a smooth migration and reap financial benefits from the new OS, said Microsoft Senior Director of Product Management Gavriella Schuster, in what is likely to be the last of a series of interviews with reporters as the company prepares to release Windows 7 worldwide on Oct. 23.
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"The real difference that I think people are seeing with Windows 7 is a different level of quality," Schuster said. "We've never reached this level of quality before in terms of performance, reliability, ease of deployment, the tools around it."
As she has in previous interviews, Schuster reiterated Microsoft's mea culpa about how the company handled preparing its business customers, ISVs (independent software vendors) and other partners for the release of Vista, which was made available to them in November 2006. At the time, drivers for key hardware and peripherals were not available, and major applications were not compatible. Additionally, many customers, as has been typical with a major Windows release, opted to wait for the release of the first service pack for Vista to even consider upgrading, and then many others did not move to the OS at all.
Schuster assured customers that moving to Windows 7 will be a far smoother process and will set a precedent for how the company will handle desktop OS releases in the future. In fact, with a release-to-manufacturing version of Windows 7 already in the hands of many business customers, they can begin to move to the OS now.
"In the past customers have had to wait for ISV support, they've needed to wait for a service pack release [to deploy Windows]," she said. "Shame on us, we've learned our lesson. We have put a lot of effort in really resolving the customer friction point before we come to them [with the OS]. We are being much more proactive and we're saying to customers, 'You don't have to wait.'"
Microsoft introduced case studies Monday showing that some customers have taken this advice -- among them, Starwood Hotels and Resorts, the city of Miami and Dutch IT services firm Getronics -- and are reporting cost-saving benefits because of this decision, Schuster said.
