Windows Vista - why you shouldn't skip it

Planning to skip Windows Vista altogether and wait for Microsoft's next operating system instead?

For some companies it's a tempting option - but they need to consider it carefully or they could be end up feeling some pain down the line, according to analyst group Gartner.

It said companies have "significantly delayed" the start of their Windows Vista migrations, with most now planning to begin deployment in late-2008 or even 2009, making some think of skipping Vista altogether. And two-thirds of silicon.com readers in a recent poll said their organisations will never move onto XP's successor.

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But Gartner research VP Michael Silver warns the next version of Windows - codenamed Windows 7 - may also suffer from the delays that dogged Vista and be just as difficult to adopt.

The Gartner research warned: "Organisations that tried to skip Windows 98, Windows 2000 and Windows XP often had ISV support issues and a difficult and often-rushed or forced migration. Organisations that try to skip Windows Vista are likely to undergo the same perils."

For example, while Microsoft will support business versions of Windows for at least 10 years and Windows XP will be supported with security fixes into 2014, many software vendors won't support their products on Windows XP that long and won't support new versions of their software on older operating systems.

For Windows XP, software suppliers will probably start dropping support in early 2010, and by 2012 it will be common for software vendors not to support Windows XP for their new versions or applications.

Gartner also warned while Microsoft said it would deliver Windows 7 about three years after Vista shipped, "Microsoft's track record for shipping new versions of Windows is not good", pointing to delays with both Windows 2000 and Vista.

If the next version of Windows - likely to be a fairly major release - ships late then companies trying to skip Vista will end up running large numbers of Windows XP PCs longer than they would like, and are likely to be forced to adopt Windows 7 before their vendors all support it.

For companies struggling to build a business case for upgrading to Vista, the analyst house suggests bringing in the new operating system on new hardware only - whch means it could take a three or four-year hardware replacement cycle to eliminate an old OS and bring in a new one.

But it also said skipping Windows Vista might be the right decision for smaller organisations because they don't have the scale to support multiple OSs on an ongoing basis, making a wholescale 'forklift' migration project more efficient.

The advice is also that larger organisations with lots of in-house developed applications should consider forklift deployments, because their developers would be responsible for supporting all homegrown applications on multiple OSs, which would "greatly increase application development costs".