Windows Vista—Enterprise Considerations

Microsoft spent about five years working on "Vista", its successor to Windows XP. They have been marketing it aggressively as the next technology step for any organization with a commitment to Microsoft desktop operating systems—that would be almost everyone. Of course, upgrading 3,000 to 10,000 (or more) machines is a significantly different project from installing Vista on a single machine or two at home. A lot has been written about the operating systems, and the trade press has accepted its arrival with a sort of obligatory but calculated enthusiasm. What's behind the hype and, more importantly, what should you take into account before committing millions of your organization's currency to this technology change.

Vista—The Promise

Vista has been touted as a substantial revision to the Windows operating system with a long list of supposed enhancements and improvements. The more notable changes appear to be reasonable and appropriate:

Security	The basic benefit of the Internet is simple, transparent, and near universal accessibility. Combine that with web applications and messaging, and the possibilities for automation are endless. So are the opportunities for mischief. Earlier versions of Windows were rife with security issues, and keeping ahead of determined hackers was a major effort for both Microsoft and Windows users. Security internals in Windows Vista represent a more significant revision than appears on the surface. User Access Control is a capability that stops the system from proceeding down any dangerous path until the user specifically provides permission. Under normal circumstances, it is invisible. Under certain conditions—almost anything administrative—it can seem like an annoying impediment. It is valuable, however, and it does work.
Stability	One of the Vista's goals was to provide a more stable, easy to manage computing platform. To that end, various internals were revised and automation for updating and troubleshooting the system have been improved. With automatic updates enabled, the system will check for, download, and install revisions automatically. (This can be disabled, too.) If a problem with the system occurs, Vista automatically checks with Microsoft for more information about troubleshooting and any available fixes. It also keeps track of these over time so that lingering issues can be resolved.
Ease of Use	Vista sports an optional new user interface called Aero, which has some similarities with recent Macintosh schemes. The idea appears to have been to update the XP interface to make seem more "fresh" or "current." The metaphor remains consistent with most common windowing systems.
Multimedia	Vista is intended to provide native support for all sorts of media capabilites—streaming video, audio, photographs, etc.—all with special attention to making these things easy to share and retrieve. This does position it better for various home entertainment and business applications that need strong media capabilities.

Vista—The Reality

In the religious wars that rage over technology, all sorts of charges have been leveled at Windows Vista. Far too much of the ink that flows on the topic serves vested interests who are trying to advance a commercial agenda of some sort. The factual reality is that experience with the operating system will range from unremarkable to truly terrible depending on conditions.

Unremarkable	If you are purchasing brand new hardware with Vista preinstalled, prospects are decent, especially if the machine(s) are fitted with a BIOS revised within the last six months and are running one of Intel's new Core 2 processors. If each machine has at least 2GB of memory and a very powerful graphics adapter, your odds of success are fairly good.
Challenging	If you have relatively capable Pentium 4 machines purchased within the last three years the following issues may make upgrades challenging: Vista expects the BIOS to behave in certain ways. You may have to upgrade the BIOS of each machine first. In some cases, no BIOS update will be available. Evaluating the upgrade against a test plan will be necessary before proceding. About 1.5GB of memory is necessary to run the operating system, so many machines will need physical upgrades. Do not try to get by with less. Many older graphics cards are not capable of running the new Aero interface, so you will need to configure machines in "classic" mode. The good news here is that this interface looks like Windows XP, which will be more familiar. Vista security has been designed to be more robust than previous versions of Windows. Networking, however, is simply harder—no two ways about that—but it should be somewhat safer. Note that Microsoft has an update for XP machines that must coexist on the network with Vista.
Terrible	If you have a variety of machines from more than one supplier and configuration is not uniform, considerable testing will be necessary. Specific areas of weakness for Vista that are aggravated on a weak machine are as follows: Support for graphics cards is problematic. Microsoft and vendors are gradually working issues out, but persistent BSOD (blue screen of death) errors can be common. UAC (user access control) can be an operational misery. You can turn it off, though that is not a recommendation. Backward compatibility with many, many applications is a problem. Most things will run. Some things will run but not predictably. Internet Explorer under Vista has had stability issues. Its "protected mode" may or may not work. IE itself may stop working altogether requiring users to logout and log back in to revive it. System performance will be slower, and a borderline machine will be fighting for air after the upgrade. Multimedia performance can be disappointing at best and make the requirement for a Core 2 machine obvious.

Enterprise Considerations

Infrastructure	Virtually every machine currently running in an enterprise will need to be either upgraded or replaced. Almost no currently installed machine will have enough memory. If a machine is more than about three years old, replacing it altogether may be simpler. This will be an issue where thousands of machines are in place.
Compatibiility	Vista presents compatibility issues for many off-the-shelf applications. They'll usually run but may not be stable. Specialty software of the sort that is common in markets such as healthcare or manufacturing may be even more problematic, and it could take vendors a while to validate and deploy new versions of their desktop software.
Training	This is the great hidden cost of a Vista migration. The look and feel is similar to Windows XP, but not identical. The bad news is that changes to the interface have not made it easier and in many cases have made it more complex and less intuitive. Even after months of use, typical users may get frustrated by a variety of little issues with navigation. The bottom line for Vista is that it is more complex and not always intuitive. The average enterprise user is generally more interested in the job function than in being a PC jock. The additional small complexities of Vista may reduce their productivity a little. Office 2007 presents a whole new dimension of enterprise costs. In addition to being an expensive upgrade, significant changes to the Office interface will require extensive re-training. Microsoft has changed the interface so extensively that even experienced and trained users may struggle for months to regain their previous competence and productivity. Caveat emptor.

Recommendations

The good news is that Microsoft has re-written large portions of the operating system to make it more reliable and supportable in the long term. The bad news is that these revisions have introduced countless issues and bugs that could never have been anticipated before wide deployment. At least one major service pack will be required to make the system stable enough for commercial production processing.

Unless you have an urgent and specific need to upgrade a system, you should defer upgrading to Windows Vista until its stability is improved. Based on the current rate of progress, consider the risk of individual upgrades (with appropriate hardware) to be acceptable with the first service pack in early 2008. For enterprise deployments where many workstations in critical areas will be affected, planning for work to start no sooner than Q3 of 2008 is probably reasonable.

Note that issues of reliability and stability are not necessarily an indication of a defective product from Microsoft. Enterprise-wide changes that involve potentially thousands of desktops require more reliable software than any initial release from any vendor can support. Microsoft appears to have been notoriously inattentive to this for a number of years, so a little preparation can prevent worrisome surprises.