Microsoft faces market verdict as Vista opens for business

Company is setting itself ambitious targets for the adoption of the new operating system and ramping up for high take-up rates, writes John Collins

It would be overstating the case to say that the technology world was waiting with bated breath for Microsoft's launch of Windows Vista at the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York yesterday. But, with a five-year gap since the last version, Windows XP, was introduced, a new release of Windows was long overdue to address the changing nature of the technology world.

Back in 2001, the PC was firmly at the centre of most people's experience of technology. Now most people use the PC as a device connected to the internet, and tasks that were once carried out in isolation on a PC, such as photo editing, are done using a range of online tools and services.

"Taking into consideration all the fantastic advancements in technology - hardware, broadband, storage technology - if you take all of those together, you could argue it was high time we refreshed our platform," admitted Jean-Philippe Courtois, president of Microsoft International, when he spoke to The Irish Times in Dublin this week.

"It is five years since Windows was advancing in such a fundamental way."

Far from being a risky period for Microsoft, Courtois says it is an "exciting time", as the company ramps up for releases of three core products that account for the bulk of its revenues. He believes that the combination of Vista, the Office System 2007 and Exchange 2007, which are being released to businesses simultaneously, will position Microsoft well to address the fundamental changes that affect the way people work.

Globalisation, the need to provide insights from the information overload that most businesspeople face, and increased mobility and collaboration, have had a massive impact on what business users expect from their software, says Courtois, and the new products are the response to that.

The event in New York yesterday marked the release of Vista to Microsoft's business customers. Home and leisure users will have to wait until January 31st to get a copy in the shops or pre-installed on a PC that they have purchased.

Technology analysts are predicting that businesses will take a cautious approach to implementing Vista given the complexity and risk involved in upgrading hundreds of thousands of PCs. That's despite the fact that Microsoft has invested a huge effort in creating tools that will make it easier to deploy and manage.

But analysts and PC manufacturers such as Dell believe that the January consumer launch will see a rush to the shops as consumers look to get the new features, such as better security, enhancements to the user interface and simplified connection to a variety of broadband connections and other networks.

With Google emerging as a significant competitor to Microsoft while Vista was in development, it was essential that it featured significantly enhanced search tools.

With many Windows users installing tools from Google, AOL and others on their PCs to help them find data both on their local PCs and networks, it was a key area that Microsoft had to pull up its socks on.

Users can now quickly create complex searches based on a range of variables such as words in the text, the type of document or date when it was created. Those searches can also be stored so that you can easily find any new documents or e-mails that match the criteria.

The desktop sidebar feature of Vista, which allows users to have a set of customisable widgets that pull information from the internet, also seems to be a direct response to Google's desktop tools.

"It's not just finding information, it's also about visualising information," says Courtois, referring to the Aero interface, which will be the single biggest change on the surface of the operating system and one that will certainly appeal to fans of the latest technology.

It will allow users to layer different windows containing applications or folders on top of each other in a transparent manner and also see live previews of what a window contains by hovering the mouse over it on the taskbar.

But Aero will only run on PCs with a powerful graphics card and plenty of memory. For example a consumer laptop purchased last Christmas will run Vista but not using the Aero interface, which could see a large number of upgraders disappointed.

The company also believes that the delays in releasing Vista will ensure the product is extremely stable at launch time. Courtois points to the fact that 15,000 people in Ireland participated in testing Vista in advance of launch - among more than one million worldwide.

The way security is approached in the operating system has also been completely overhauled and programs running on the PC no longer have access to core services - a feature that was regularly exploited by hackers. It also has basic anti-virus protection out of the box and gives corporate IT managers and much more control over USB drives and other portable media that could be used to copy important company data.

Courtois, who is responsible for Microsoft sales, marketing and services in all regions outside the US and Canada, said he would not just measure the success of the new products on the number of implementations in the first 12 months. He said he would also measure it in terms of the number of new software applications and hardware devices that are introduced to work with Vista.

Thirty Irish software companies are developing products specifically for Vista and will be supporting the official Irish launch of the product, which takes place in Croke Park next week.

Microsoft is setting itself ambitious targets for the adoption of the new operating system and is ramping up for the fastest adoption rates of any new Windows release. With no single over-arching reason for users to make the switch, it remains to be seen just how ambitious that target will be.