Enterprise Initiatives

I was on Microsoft's website trying to understand the business benefits of upgrading to Vista. I found this article called Key reasons to upgrade to Windows Vista. To sum it up, here are the four reasons from Microsoft that justify this expensive upgrade:

1. Empowering users to find and use information
2. Enabling mobile workers to stay connected and productive in and out of office
3. Helping companies to make corporate systems and information more secure
4. Making it easier to deploy and manage company PCs

That's it. I would think that corporations would like more business value to justify the cost of hardware upgrades and PC purchases that will be required to run Vista. I can only think of two reasons to upgrade to Vista.

1. XP will eventually not be supported by Microsoft (currently targeted for 2014).
2. As other businesses upgrade, your company will not be able to open Office 2007 documents unless you install the Office Compatibility Pack.

Now let's discuss Microsoft's four reasons to upgrade. First, the improvements in searching for data. I use Google Desktop which gives me Google's world class search functionality across all my files and emails. The cost...Zero! It runs great on XP. No need to upgrade for this.

Second, enable mobile workforce. A lot of nice to have's here. Most companies already have tools that address the security and the collaboration. These features do not justify upgrading all of the hardware in your enterprise, especially when most of your hardware is not mobile.

Third, security. Wasn't this one of the selling points for going to XP. I feel like Bill Murray in Ground Hog's Day. Security is one of the main reasons why people are looking at alternative operating systems. Yes we need better security. Do I think that Vista is the answer? The jury is still out.

And finally, easier desktop management. These are commendable features. Many companies already have enterprise tools for managing their desktops and others are already moving to a desktop server approach that centrally manages desktop images and automatically updates client PCs when they connect to the network. I think the advancements in desktop management in Vista are great, but it does not justify the upgrade by itself.

So of the four reasons to upgrade to Vista giving to us by Microsoft, only security is compelling enough for me to even consider it. The shelf life of XP is the real business driver. We can argue all day long whether Vista is more secure then XP or any other OS for that matter, but other then a few reports from Microsoft's own Jeff Jones, I haven't seen any compelling facts to make me want to start an upgrade tomorrow.

I did stumble across a good article from Kelly Martin from SecurityFocus called The New Vista Waiting Game. He predicts that XP will be the corporate standard for years to come. Here is a quote from the article:

“ Despite all the coming advertising and sales pitches about early Vista installations, most businesses would be foolish to upgrade to Vista in the coming year. Businesses want stable, reliable environments. They want to see service packs that address problems even before they encounter them. They want secure environments as well, but to senior executives and other decision makers, this is still a function of Security Risk Management that can be mitigated in various different ways. ”

The good news is that XP will be supported for several more years. That gives corporations time to wait for Vista to become more stable and mature. It also gives corporations time to test different distributions of Linux and have an alternative to Vista once XP gets put out to pasture.

After writing an article that discussed embracing open source, one of my colleagues entered my office and gave me the "Eat your own Dog Food" speech. So he downloaded Ubuntu Desktop for me using BitTorrent and burned me a CD. The install was simple and I was up an running in minutes. I have been running without one piece of Microsoft software on my laptop for three weeks now and I am loving it. Free at last, Free at last!


There are some challenges though. Open Office is a great replacement for Microsoft Office but I can't find a replacement to read existing Visio diagrams. Today I received an MS Project file that I couldn't open. I am sure if I search the net I can find an open source tool to do the job. I also had a problem with my printer driver which took some time to resolve. Thunderbird is a great email client but it doesn't have hooks into my Outlook Calendar so I can't use it for my corporate mail. I am using Evolution which is only marginal. When time allows I will test out Sunbird and Lightning.

But with all of that aside, I no longer wait for 5-10 minutes for my laptop to boot up. I don't wait forever for Outlook to come up in the mornings, and I don't get any system crashes. The blue screen of death is a distant memory and the daily reboot routine is no longer required. There are no stupid paper clips popping up asking me if I am sure that I know what I am doing.

I am sure my freedom will end when somebody in desktop services realizes that all of their Big Brother software is not being run on my laptop. I will enjoy the ride while it lasts.

I know the majority of the corporate world isn't quite ready to replace their Windows desktops with Linux yet, but I can tell you from my experience that Ubuntu is ready for prime time.