Enterprises Shunning Vista, Eyeing Apple?

Redmond Channel Partner Online reported Wednesday that IT administrators are more frequently snubbing Windows Vista than they did six months ago. Moreover, some who responded to a recent KACE-sponsored survey said they are considering alternatives like Apple's Mac OS X or Linux. A few may even give their employees a choice in operating systems.

The most recent survey, conducted by King Research for KACE in June, polled nearly 1,200 IT professionals. Some interesting figures:

• 60 percent said they have "no plans to deploy Vista."
• 92 percent said Vista SP 1 did not make them more comfortable about deploying Vista.
• 42 percent of respondents said they are considering alternative operating systems; 29 percent are looking at Mac, and 14 percent are looking at Linux variations.

It's not good news for Microsoft, Redmond Channel Partner indicates, considering Redmond is poised to spend $300 million on a new Windows Vista advertising campaign. And I agree with KACE CEO Rob Meinhardt's conclusion: The survey results don't necessarily mean that companies are preparing to dump all their Windows deployments for other operating systems.

Rather, the results are indicative of a continuing trend toward heterogeneous IT environments, where two or more operating systems will coexist on the same network.