Microsoft Tuesday said sales of Vista have hit 88 million and the company highlighted a number of customer migrations it says signify that users are gearing up to switch to the year-old OS despite recent surveys that say many are taking a cautious approach.
Company officials say the ebb and flow of new contracts and expiring contracts means the overall number of volume licensing copies of Vista doesn’t change dramatically from quarter to quarter.
In addition to the 88 million copies of Vista sold, Microsoft said 42 million PCs now have Vista licenses via volume licensing contracts signed by corporate users. Microsoft used the same 42 million number back in July when it discussed Vista uptake at its annual meeting for financial analysts.
The Vista numbers were tabulated during Microsoft’s first fiscal quarter, which ended Sept. 30. The financial results of that quarter were reported Oct. 25.
The numbers of copies sold represents nearly a 47 per cent increase over the 60 million copies sold that was reported by Microsoft in July.
Vista shipped to corporate users on Nov. 30, 2006, after five years in development.
A recent survey by King Research, which was funded by systems management vendor Kace, showed that 90 per cent of 961 IT professionals surveyed said they have concerns about migrating to Vista and more than half reported they have no plans to do so.
The respondents showed concerns that Vista would reduce stability and introduce too much complexity into their environments.
“Stability in general was frequently cited, as well as compatibility with the business software that would need to run on Vista,” says Diane Hagglund of King Research. “Cost was also cited as a concern by some respondents.”
The report showed the 44 per cent of respondents have considered non-Windows operating systems, such as Linux and Macintosh, to avoid the Vista migration.
