IT Execs Say Vista Uptake Slow

Adoption of Windows Vista is lagging and will continue to do so as 2008 begins, channel and IT executives said Wednesday at the Raymond James IT Supply Chain Conference in New York.

"That's been a disappointment. Our customer surveys tell us [customers] are adopting at a slower rate than we -- or anyone else -- thought. Even those that have licenses and can move quickly are not," said John Edwardson, chairman and CEO of CDW, Vernon Hills, Ill.

Customers still do not see the benefits of upgrading to Vista from XP, Edwardson added.

"Our CIO has been using Vista now for a long time. His comment is that it would take three or four hours for every user to learn Vista. He thinks it will be a big investment," Edwardson said. "For [end user] customers, the investment is not just in teaching Vista, but in new hardware to go along with it. It will continue to be adopted, but it's a slower base than anyone thought it would be a couple years ago."

Cathie Lesjak, executive vice president and CFO at Hewlett-Packard, told analysts that Vista Service Pack 1 will be an important event in adoption of the OS in corporate America.

"We didn't think we'd see any significant uptick on Vista until that came out. We saw growth. Our commercial business is up 16 percent on the PSG side. [But] it's still not a Vista commercial moment or a consumer Vista moment. We'll see what happens. Our view is about the same," she said.

But it's still not clear when SP1 will be released, or what will be included in it, said Greg Spierkel, chairman and CEO of Ingram Micro.

"It's not a factor. It's not a positive. It's not a negative. I was really hoping it would be a catalyst by now but it's not," Spierkel said.

"We've seen our clients upgrading to Vista, although I can't speak to whether that rate of adoption is comparatively fast or slow," said Jim Leto, president and CEO of GTSI Corporation. "But nobody's come to us with any upgrade problems -- and I love it." The executives' comments echoed sentiments from John Paget, president of Avnet Technology Solutions, speaking at Avnet's investor day earlier in the week in New York City.

"We're not seeing a rapid movement to Vista today," Paget said. "We're reading the same things you're reading about the amount of memory involved. We're not seeing a rapid introduction to small and/or large businesses," Paget said.

"Microsoft has talked about doing some upgrades and so on and so forth. It's not a big part of our business either. It's more of a value play," he said.

--Additional reporting by Jennifer Lawinski and Nathan Eddy

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