What impact will Vista plus Office 12 have on businesses?
With the news that the Technical Beta of Office 12 is being released to 10,000 customers and partners at midnight tonight, MST (Microsoft Time), the question many businesses will face is : what problems will the near-simultaneous shipping of both Windows Vista and Office next year add to migration headaches?
The answer to this is as complex as the software itself. An informed guess is that a well-stocked supply of headache remedies would not be a bad investment. “Migration” may well replace “migraine” as the principal cause.
The report from Gartner (posted on earlier in the week) has a few things to say about this. The analysts believe companies should build in a 12 to 18-month roll-out period in their deployments to overcome potential obstacles. The roll-out period is also expected to be extended as a result of Microsoft launching Office “12″ at around the same time as Windows Vista. Office 12 programs will have to be tested alongside Vista. In addition, Microsoft is also launching its new Internet Explorer 7 browser next year, so users will be expected to test the browser’s new security features on their systems.
Companies still using the creaking Windows 2000 operating system will have the most difficult issues to overcome, as some third-party application providers are ending support for 2000. They will be under more pressure to adopt Windows Vista more speedily, while Windows XP users will have more time to wait for initial bugs to be ironed out, as XP will still enjoy both Microsoft and third-party support for some years.
2006 is going to be a busy year for IT managers the world over. One consolation, they won’t be able to complain, “Microsoft never ships anything!” ever again.
[Source: ComputerWeekly]
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POSTED IN: IE7, Microsoft, Windows Vista
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