Vista: Businesses not rushing to upgrade

According to a new poll, 86 per cent of IT decision makers surveyed said their companies plan to implement Vista, though only 20 per cent plan to do so in the next year.

Microsoft will start selling Vista this month to large companies that have volume licence contracts, while smaller businesses will have to wait until the mainstream consumer launch in January.

The poll of 761 buyers, commissioned by online retailer CDW, found 51 per cent of respondents saying that they would have to replace or upgrade half of their PCs in order to run Vista.

Rob Helm, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, said most large businesses won't start looking at Vista until January or February and will then spend a year or more planning their rollouts.

Helm said: "We're talking the end of 2007 and into 2008, before you start seeing mass production deployments."

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The CDW survey appears to back up Helm's estimate. While many businesses expressed their intent to move to Vista, only 24 per cent of respondents said they had even a rough plan for how they would make the move.

It's not that the improved security isn't a good selling point, said Helm, it's just that it will take time for businesses to adapt to Vista as they deal with new requirements that companies individually activate each copy of Vista - a step that wasn't needed with Windows XP.

Microsoft, meanwhile, is forecasting a speedy adoption for Vista. Brad Goldberg, general manager for Windows Client product management, predicted in September Vista would be put in use by twice as many businesses in the first year as Windows XP was in the 12 months following its October 2001 release.

CNET News.com's Joris Evers contributed to this report

Ina Fried writes for CNET News.com