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March 23, 2010
IT Pros Adopting Windows 7
Windows 7 is proving to be a hot commodity among IT professionals, with a majority of admins planning to deploy the new operating system, according to the results of a survey conducted by Dimensional Research and sponsored by Dell KACE (News - Alert).
Among the more than 900 IT pros questioned about their Windows 7 adoption plans in January, half of them expect to fully deploy the OS throughout their organizations before the end of the year. That’s far ahead of the plans IT had for Windows Vista deployment over the same timeframe and a change of pace for admins who typically wait for Service Pack 1 before rolling out a new version of Windows.
Windows 7 has developed a good reputation among IT admins who have grown more confident about the OS while becoming less worried about its performance and reliability, according to the survey results. One concern is over the cost of migrating to Windows 7 compared with the cost of sticking with Windows XP, but even that has been diminishing over time. But the largest fear is still over software compatibility.
As for the specific figures detailed in the survey results, 87 percent of those questioned are eyeing a Windows 7 deployment versus only 47 percent who had planned a Vista rollout just three months after its release. Among those, 58 percent are likely to deploy Win 7 by year’s end, while 46 percent won’t even wait until Service Pack 1 is released. As of January, 16 percent of IT groups have already rolled out Windows 7 to their users.
Only 25 percent of IT admins are worried about its performance, while 41 percent remain concerned about its stability. But a high number – 86 percent – are still anxious about software compatibility.
Among the 900 IT pros, only 27 percent said they plan to use commercial deployment tools to roll out Windows 7, with the remaining 73 percent likely to use free utilities offered by Microsoft (News - Alert) or disk imaging software such as Norton Ghost.
In last year's survey, IT admins expressed a certain impatient with Microsoft's OS as 50 percent said they were considering alternative operating systems to avoid using Windows. But Windows 7 seems to be reversing that trend--only 32 percent of those surveyed in January said they’re looking at other systems. Among those still eyeing a different OS, 32 percent are considering the Mac OS for their businesses, with the rest investigating different flavors of Linux.
To compile the survey results, responses were taken from a total of 923 people. Those who responded included hands-on IT pros, IT managers, and IT executives. The survey covered a range of companies of different sizes and from different industries.
Lance Whitney is a journalist, IT consultant, and Web Developer with almost 20 years of experience in the IT world. To read more of Lance's articles, please visit his columnist page
Edited by Kelly McGuire
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