VARs Ready To Run With Vista But See Some Obstacles
The new Aero graphical user interface in Vista, which Microsoft released in a New York launch event on Nov. 30, provides 3-D-like rendering, a redesigned Start Menu with Instant Search bar, a live icon preview, transparent Windows and a Flip 3-D feature that flips Windows like a Rolodex, all for better desktop navigation.
Although some say Aero looks nice but delivers little while hogging system resources, Harrison and other solution providers insist the new Windows desktop will help users find business information more quickly and boost overall productivity.
SLIDE SHOW: Inside The Vista Launch
"People can multitask for the first time without having a huge screen before them with multiple windows," Harrison said. "Now you just point to a document and preview what's in there. People who speculate there will be slow adoption in business are wrong. From the UI point of view, Vista is really compelling."
Vista -- Microsoft's first major upgrade of the Windows client in five years -- offers many usability, security, management, performance and mobility enhancements that will deliver a strong return on investment for small and midsize businesses and enterprises out of the gate, according to many solution providers. Still, convincing customers that the Aero GUI isn't just fluff is just one of the challenges that Microsoft partners will face as they try to encourage customers to migrate to Vista.
By far, the biggest objection to Vista will be its hefty hardware requirements. Partners overwhelmingly agree that Vista's processing, memory and graphics requirements -- at minimum, a dual-core processor, at least 1 Gbyte of memory and high-end graphics card -- will necessitate a costly PC refresh cycle for business users and consumers.
Anticipating that probability, Silicon East's Harrison has been deploying Vista-ready PCs at customer sites for the past 18 months. Manalapan, N.J.-based Silicon East even engaged one of its clients, an architectural firm, to participate in Microsoft's Vista Technology Adopter Program (TAP).
Yet partners remain wary about potential application incompatibilities stemming from changes that Microsoft made to the device driver model and the new user accounts control mode, which are designed to make this version of Windows far more secure from attack. And the pressure is on solution providers to develop sales strategies and marketing plans to overcome these potential sales obstacles.
To address that reality, Microsoft has readied resources, including the Windows Vista Business Value Discussion Tool, to help partners prepare for Vista sales calls. But the onus is on channel partners to use the resources available to them and articulate Vista's benefits to customers.
NEXT: VARs describe upgrade environment for Vista.
Craig Miller, director of engineering at KIS, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in Fremont, Calif., said the hardware hangup will stall adoption in the SMB sector. Nevertheless, he expects to reap between $1 million and $2 million in Vista services business next year. KIS expects to sell customers on the security, cost savings and productivity benefits of the OS, whose value far outweighs the price tag of a new PC. KIS believes its customers in the construction and legal industries will benefit from the 3-D modeling, high-end graphics and the "ability to Rolodex and flip between screens."
"Most of my clients are small and medium-sized businesses, and their budgets don't bear the ability to do a full rip-and-replace of all their desktops to be done at once. As they get rid of older systems, they'll put in the new OS," Miller said. "A lot of SMBs will be slowly deploying, but we'll have some work out of the gate because they need our help to get this done. There's a lot more in Vista than there was in XP."
There also are new features designed for SMB customers, such as the integrated Fax and Scan tool, robust Remote Installation services and a new Backup and Restore Center that offers enhanced system restore capabilities, as well as Windows Backup and Previous Versions, a feature based on the Volume Shadow Copy technology first introduced in Windows Server.
Partners predict that Vista's security benefits -- including the new BitLocker encryption for laptops, user account control mode, Internet Explorer 7's protected mode, Windows Defender and overall security service hardening -- will spur the platform's adoption by SMBs and enterprises.
Running PCs in user account mode will vastly reduce attacks without handcuffing users' ability to access key features, according to Microsoft. Vista makes it possible for end users to easily add printers and connect to network projectors and wireless networks securely without administrators' help.
To address management costs, Microsoft also implemented in Vista built-in diagnostic tools and the Network Center to help end users discover and resolve network bottleneck issues and connectivity problems. For example, the tool will automatically link users to the most secure wireless hotspot at an airport to prevent unauthorized access.
Vista's new corporate imaging management technology also will enable large customers to deploy and customize one core Vista image for various groups rather than supporting multiple images. The Windows Mobility Center, another new feature, lets users and system builders quickly configure mobile system settings such as power, display and wireless. And the Vista Sync Center makes it easier to synchronize data between PCs and servers.
Partners say Vista's new enterprise search and organize, Windows Meeting Space ad hoc collaboration, Windows Mobility Center and Vista Sync Center will be major draws. Another new desktop capability called Sidebar also provides instant desktop access to RSS feeds, Web services, gadgets and other mini-applications that allow customers to integrate Internet and corporate data on the Windows desktop.
"Starting with our managed services customers, we will be magnifying the integrated search, security and productivity features predominantly, followed by the use of gadgets for bringing line-of-business information directly into the desktop experience," said Stephen Moss, COO of NSPI, a Microsoft solution provider based in Roswell, Ga.
Getronics and Avanade are two large systems integrators working with customers as part of Microsoft's Vista TAP program. Getronics, for example, is working with one U.S. financial services giant that plans to deploy Vista on 80,000 seats.
Lee Nicholls, Getronics' Microsoft practice manager, said he Vista's new BitLocker encryption, enterprise search and offline folders, image management, mobile connections manager and network diagnostics will have enormous benefit for large corporate environments. Users can access files and folders from Windows Explorer that contain search results that can be cached locally, refreshed and used offline.
NEXT: More on Vista's benefits -- and some pitfalls.
BitLocker is a big cost saver because it prevents would-be thieves or hackers from getting into the hard drive of a lost or stolen PC. That makes it less costly to secure corporate data and achieve compliance, while also making it far easier for IT administrators and partners to get end users back up and running, Nicholls said.
Moreover, tools that ease desktop deployment, image management benefits and enhanced diagnostics will help reduce ongoing maintenance costs, Nicholls added. Vista is much better at diagnosing and resolving connectivity issues than in the past, he said.
"About 30 percent of the IT budget is for deployment and distribution of new systems, while the other 70 percent is for ongoing maintenance," Nicholls said. It's far easier to support, and end users can resolve problems. Vista will reduce baseline costs in help desk, maintenance and security. Security is the No. 1 thing to reduce costs."
The downside to Vista? In most cases, Vista will require a hardware refresh that will delay rollouts, according to Nicholls.
"Vista isn't a lean creature, and it needs serious resources to run on, especially if you turn on the new interface," he said. "This is the one thing that could delay Vista because companies may want the features but may not want to do a hardware rollout right now."
Tyson Hartman, CTO of Avanade, a joint services venture of Microsoft and Accenture, agreed that great improvements in usability, security and manageability will make Vista a compelling upgrade for most enterprises. He has been working with seven early Vista adopters as part of the TAP program.
Hartman and others, though, believe that lingering application compatibility issues will slow adoption. Although ISVs and hardware vendors have begun to ramp up their Vista driver development, it will take some time before all applications and hardware devices are Vista-compatible, and even longer for third-party products to be optimized to take advantage of Vista's .Net 3.0 Web service, presentation and workflow foundations.
Hartman said he's advising his customers to embark on a lengthy planning and testing cycle of all their internally developed applications before deploying Vista. "There will be applications that will be problematic amid changes in security and access that initially people will not appreciate, even though it's making the desktop more secure," he said. "It's another reason enterprises will adopt it at a slower pace, to fully assess their own software applications."
Both Hartman and Getronics' Nicholls pointed out that in Vista Microsoft has integrated several deployment tools and a business desktop deployment solution that partners can use to ease that process. Microsoft also has provided an application compatibility tool kit that customers can use to test in-house applications.
And as a final resort, partners can deploy virtualization software from Microsoft and other vendors, such as Virtual PC Express and Softricity -- to help customers experiment with Vista on Windows XP machines and migrate current workloads to Vista PCs to ensure business continuity during Vista rollouts.
Tyson and others also noted that solution providers and application developers can tap into Vista's .Net 3.0 Web service, workflow and graphics subsystems to enable a new generation of Web 2.0 applications. But that won't happen just yet.
"Customers are just beginning to understand all the capabilities of .Net 3.0 and WinFX. We have early adopters interested in workflow, communications foundation and the Aero interface, but it will take some time," Avanade's Hartman said. "To take advantage of the translucence and depth and pseudo 3-D usability experience means you might have to make changes to your apps to take advantage of .Net 3.0."
But some partners are already jumping on that opportunity. Notion Solutions, a Microsoft custom application solution provider in Irving, Texas, has invested roughly $40,000 to train its developers on Vista's .Net 3.0 programming model, formerly known as WinFX.
Chris Menegay, president of Notion Solutions, said applications will drive Vista adoption. The company expects to reap as much as $500,000 in new business next year because of its ability to develop corporate applications that use Vista's new vector-based graphics, service-oriented architecture and workflow features.
"We expect many customers will want to use the new tools of .Net 3.0 and Vista to solve problems that previously were much more complex," Menegay said. "Since we write custom applications for our customers, the Vista sale comes from the killer app that requires it. Unless a customer is intending to immediately roll out Vista for security or other reasons, the adoption will be gradual. First, we see the development teams using it to build the next generation of applications, and then the users of those applications will be migrated to Vista, and eventually entire companies."