Brian Gammage

Welcome to the Windows 7 blog. Over the next few weeks, we  will be blogging some thoughts about Windows 7 and we’re going to use Brian’s blog to capture it all. I’m Michael Silver, lead analyst on client operating systems for Gartner, and I’m the first of a number of guest bloggers. We invite you to take advantage of all the research we’ve done on this topic, schedule inquiries with the appropriate Gartner analysts to help apply our research to your specific situation, and check this blog several times a week during October for more thoughts.

For Microsoft, Windows 7 is the most important release of Windows ever. Sure, there were other times when Microsoft had important releases of Windows. Windows 3.0 was a breakthrough release of the product and really was responsible for Microsoft capturing the position it eventually did in the market. Windows 95 further cemented that position as it finally broke the 640K DOS memory limit and consumers waited on lines that stretched around the block of mid-90’s computer stores. Windows XP was an important release as Microsoft officially ended the Windows 9x architecture (and had to make up for the dismal Windows ME) and successfully transitioned a huge consumer installed base to the Windows NT installed base. And Windows XP SP2 moved to put the widespread security problems behind Microsoft and revitalize its reputation for improved quality.

But Windows Vista was by far, the worst release of its flagship product. After years of delay, Microsoft scrambled to get a product out the door. But its huge ecosystem largely abandoned it and machines purchased after release had flaky drivers and many were underconfigured to keep PC prices down and volumes up. The product improved over the last three years, but its reputation never did. The weak economy meant that organizations were buying fewer new PCs, so organizations that had been predisposed to bring in new PCs with Windows Vista didn’t bring in too many new PCs and it did not make sense to bring in the ones they did with the new OS. The Windows ecosystem dragged its feet in supplying Vista-compatible software. The failure of Vista was compounded by a successful and unanswered attack by Apple, which made belittled Vista (and Microsoft).

Over this past summer, many people compared Apple’s Snow Leopard launch with Microsoft’s for Windows 7. In truth, they are nothing alike. Apple’s new release included many small improvements, but in the best case scenario, a successful Apple product would mean a continued, steady increase in their sales and if the product turned out to be a total disaster, it probably would not have impaired their sales by that much. Conversely, a second consecutive bad outing for Microsoft would probably be enough to shake the confidence of the market and could potentially lead to the decline of the company.

The initial feedback on Windows 7 has been excellent. The OS feels solid and performance is significantly improved. It is even winning some fans from the Apple Mac OS fan base, although there are few fan bases that are as loyal and vocal as Apple’s. Feedback from clients indicates that their preparations to deploy Windows 7 are already under way and we expect the new OS to be an extremely successful product.

However, Microsoft is not out of the woods yet. While the majority of applications installed in enterprises today require Windows, Microsoft face an enterprise software market which is increasingly moving to OS-neutral applications, and a consumer market that is embracing products from Apple, embracing devices other than traditional PCs, and having more influence over the technologies used in the workplace.

While Microsoft is trying to distance Windows 7 from Vista, Windows 7 is very much Windows Vista under the covers. It builds on the architectural improvements of Windows Vista and indeed, there could not be a Windows 7 had their never been a Windows Vista. That’s another problem, though – how can Microsoft release a version of Windows with major architectural changes and make it easy to absorb. Or perhaps the better question is whether that’s an attainable goal. But that’s a topic for another blog…