Surveys find that 60 percent of companies worldwide have already made plans to deploy the Windows 7, and nearly half of them will do it within the first year of release.

That’s good news to those of us in the IT Industry but some channel partners remain skeptical about the boost they expect Windows 7 to provide to their sales numbers over the next year.  A new study out by ITIC (Information Technology Intelligence Corp) and Sunbelt Software shows that 60 percent of companies worldwide have made plans to deploy the new operating system, and 49 percent will do it within the first year of release.

The independent survey conducted by ITIC asked C-level executives and IT Managers from 1,500 companies about their attitudes concerning the upcoming Windows release. It found that 19 percent of decision-makers plan on deploying within three months of release, 12 percent within three to six months and 18 percent within six months to a year. An additional 11 percent say they’re holding off until after the first Service Pack ships and 40 percent more say they do not have a definite deployment timetable.

Of those 40 percent of respondents with no definite plans for deployment, the most common reasons cited for delay or indifference include concerns about compatibility with legacy hardware and software and the lack of a compelling business reason to migrate from Windows XP or Vista deployments.

While the absence of a killer app is certainly a hurdle for Microsoft, the company has certainly put its shoulder into the effort for smoothing out the compatibility nightmares that plagued Vista’s deployments. Early indicators from this recent ITIC survey show that Microsoft may well reap the benefits from these efforts. Among respondents who have participated in Windows 7 beta testing, 80 percent rated performance and compatibility of Windows 7 as ‘Excellent’ or ‘Very Good.’

It’s a good Operating System, adds lots of great new features and looks like a good bet for businesses and consumers.  We’ll just have to wait to see if the numbers play out as predicted.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 at 1:21 pm and is filed under Windows 7. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.