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VARs shouldn’t start singing the Windows Vista blues just yet. While Vista hasn’t exactly revolutionized operating systems or changed the world with software, it also hasn’t plummeted into a bottomless adoption gap as some analysts claimed it would. And if solution providers give Vista another chance, they just might find themselves singing a different tune.

In April 2008, a year after Vista’s original release, Bill Gates told a Tokyo audience that Vista had racked up 140 million sales, proof that the OS has been selling “at a rapid pace,” one that beat out Windows XP’s sales rate a year after that OS launched.

Michael Cherry, senior analyst with independent firm Directions on Microsoft, says first of all that it’s best to take Gates at his word, since there’s no good reason for Microsoft to “fudge sales numbers or play fast and loose with words.” But Cherry also notes that XP adoption by businesses was also somewhat disappointing until Service Pack 2 shipped.

“They’re saying that Vista sales are tracking with XP sales in the same time period, but what everyone’s forgetting is that XP got off to a slow start, too,” Cherry says.

Research firm IDC’s recent report on Vista, released just after SP1 shipped in February 2008, shows that adoption rates for the OS aren’t as dismal as conventional wisdom and public perception would have you believe. IDC predicted in October 2006 that first-year Vista consumer sales would account for about 34 percent of total 2007 Windows COE (client operating environment) sales, and that Vista’s business versions would be 22 percent of total Windows COE sales.

The actual numbers, according to IDC’s March 2008 report “Worldwide Windows Client Operating Environments 2008–2012 Forecast: Windows Vista Momentum Picks Up Steam,” by analysts Al Gillen and Brett Waldman, were not that far off the mark: Windows Vista consumer sales were 36 percent of the 2007 total, while business versions were 18 percent of the total for Windows COE sales.

These numbers are nothing to sneeze at, but they still failed to live up to the hype Microsoft itself built up around Vista before its release. According to the IDC report, “Microsoft’s PR machine elevated expectations to lofty objectives.” But the massive install base, software that was more compatible with XP than Vista and a solid channel pretty much doomed Vista to an adoption rate no faster than previous products. As the IDC report puts it, “A worldwide frenzy on the scale of the Windows 95 launch a decade ago, it was not.”

Cherry says that’s not surprising. In the past, with upgrades such as Windows 95 and 98, major OS and hardware changes gave end users a much more compelling reason to upgrade. Recently, though, operating system technology has stabilized, and people are more satisfied with the functionality and features they have, Cherry says. He compares the adoption curve to that of 64-bit processors, which didn’t revolutionize the market in the way many pundits expected.

“There’s just not a reason to rip and replace with new technology just because, for example, Intel and AMD or, in this case, Microsoft tells you to,” he says.

Where does this leave VARs, then? Unfortunately, Cherry believes there aren’t good opportunities for VARs to help customers upgrade to Vista, especially if those customers plan to run Vista on hardware bought before the OS was released.

“Because those machines do not have the capabilities to run Vista well, it’s not going to be a good experience,” he says. Of course, there’s always the opportunity to help those struggling customers downgrade, as many OEMs are offering XP downgrade kits with newly purchased hardware.

But Cherry says the real channel opportunity comes when resellers offer properly configured hardware with sufficient processor, memory and graphics resources to run Vista, and build in management and maintenance on top of those systems.

“If the channel integrates machines that have the resources to run Vista, then it’ll be a great sale opportunity for them and a good experience for the end customer,” Cherry says.

Another reason for Vista’s lackluster numbers could just be a matter of prioritizing. Cherry says IT departments have a lot on their plates right now, and that while organizations may decide to migrate to Vista in the future, a desktop refresh may not top priority lists this year. IDC’s report says Windows Vista won’t accelerate companies’ decisions to replace existing Windows XP Pro and Windows 2000 Pro, but will simply function as a slow, necessary “evolution” in corporate OS technology.

And when IT departments do decide to engage with their reseller to upgrade, it most likely won’t happen all at once.

“They’re never going to replace 100 percent of all machines in a company in a single year,” Cherry says. If a typical desktop refresh takes five or six years, then in 2008 only one-fifth or one-sixth of the entire install base is upgrading, which could contribute to flat upgrade numbers.

A Vista user himself, Cherry adds that while a lot of Vista’s upgrades amount to “flash and glitz,” there’s nothing inherently awful about the OS, and it’s simply difficult to hype features and motivate customers to upgrade early when the OS market is so mature.

“Sure, there are arbitrary changes, there are things about it I don’t like,” Cherry says. “They’ve moved different [functions and options] to what I consider strange places, but … that’s so subjective. That’s not reason to say it’s a bad OS.”

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