CIOs Of Midsize Companies In No Hurry For Vista

Everything Channel asked 13 CIOs of midsize companies what their plans were for upgrading to Microsoft Vista within their organization. A show of hands earlier in the day during a keynote address at the Midsize Enterprise Summit indicated that many companies planned to bypass the beleaguered OS, or at least were in no hurry to adopt it.

The 12 responses we received were pretty consistent: Vista is still more trouble than it's worth, said the CIOs.

"Yes, we're skipping Vista. I don't see the value add or the benefits to go through the expense and the time it would take. I haven't heard a good thing about it from any colleague that I respect that would make me want to do it."

- Ed Eskew, vice president and CIO of Bearnard Chaus, Secaucus, N.J.

"There's nothing which makes me want to run out and get it. There's no compelling reason to adopt right now. Until the whole platform is stabilized, I think you'll see more of a gradual increase in adoption."

- Earl Monsour, director of strategic information technologies for the Maricopa Community College District, Tempe, Ariz.

"We did a test but it did not go well. We had driver compatibility issues, Citrix compatibility issues. It's hard for us to support 1,000 users if things don't go really, really well. We're waiting. We'll see what the [Windows] 7 schedule looks like but we're going to delay as long as possible."

- Niel Nickolaisen, CIO and director of strategic planning for Headwaters, of South Jordan, Utah

"No, we're not skipping it. Vista gives us the security we need with a small number of staff I've been using it for two years. We've had little problems here and there, but we're eating the medicine and will make it work."

- George Murphy, director of technology and information technology at Junior Achievement, Colorado Springs, Colo.

"We've been discussing it. The reality is I don't think we can skip Vista. When you're a state government you have a number of people making recommendations and the recommendation is to be cautious about Vista. Our [North Dakota] State Assembly will be the first group to be completely on Vista when their new session starts in January, that'll be where the rubber hits the road."

- Gary Vetter, customer services director for the Information Technology Department for the State of North Dakota.

"We're not going to skip it long term, but yes for the short term. Ultimately, we'll have to use the next version of Windows, and that will be based on Vista. Let's put it this way, it's not in my budget for 2009, so the earliest we could budget it would be for 2010. We're also skipping Office 2007. The training [time and resources] are too high and the return on investment is too low for our users."

- Chaim Yudkowsky, director of information technology for The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Washington, D.C.

"Most likely we'll skip it because of the resources and costs, and the ability to support it. It's not going to be high on our priority list at the moment."

- Brad Harrington, CIO of American Wood Moulding, of Hanover, Md.

"We have not made a decision to skip it but we're leaning more in that direction. In higher education, we have a lot of disciplines with very specific application packages and the [applicaton] providers do not fully [support] Vista yet. It takes a while for us to move to a new OS anyway. We need a good reason to move. We did move to Office 2007 so we would have one version for the whole campus."

- Joyce LaFleur, director of information technology and services for Aquinas College, Grand Rapids, Mich.

"We are completing our Vista and Office 2007 refresh today [Sept. 16]. We were looking for new equipment, our lease was up. We migrated from Lotus Notes to Exchange and SharePoint. [Vista] was in our roadmap. It was in our roadmap before I got here [a year ago]. We did a pilot that was pure hell. We had over 100 issues, but 80 percent of them were resolved. We're not out of the woods yet, but people are happy for the most part."

- David Lindstrom, director of information technology for R.G. Barry Corp., Pickerington, Ohio

"We're not going to do it. I don't see the value. We're not going to do anything that doesn't add value. We tested the stuff and it didn't work. That was months ago but I'm not going to spend my life testing someone else's product for them."

- Martin Luffy, CIO of Installed Building Products, Columbus, Ohio

"No. There are too many issues to deal with. We're trying to get more educated on it. We're trying to figure out whether it's a forklift upgrade. From our perspective, it will be more painful now than vs. waiting. I've also talked to a lot of my colleagues here [at Midsize Enterprise Summit]."

- Angelo Mazzocco, CIO of Progressive Medical, Westerville, Ohio

"We don't have a large number of PCs and the ones we use tend to be embedded with XP. I don't see Vista embedded yet. As we add new PCs, I think they will be on Vista, but we're not doing an all over change."

- Sorin Badea, senior security manager for information systems for AvalonBay Communities, San Jose, Calif.

"We have no plans to implement Vista at this time. It really depends on when [Windows] 7 comes out. I don't see a significant reason to go to Vista when the next version is so close."



- James DeHoniesto, CIO of Cabot Electronics, Aurora, Ill.