'Worried' Microsoft to get heavy-handed over XP upgrades

Microsoft may well be extolling the virtues of upgrading to Windows XP later in the year, but users are reluctant even to migrate to Windows 2000 - a finding which may force the company into some aggressive licensing and support moves to protect its revenues.

Nearly 18 months have past since the launch of Windows 2000, but an overwhelming majority of organisations - between 85 and 90 per cent of the Microsoft customer base - have still not rolled out full Active Directory services.

This is just one of the findings of Giga Group's controversial State of Windows report launched today in Rome at the Giga World IT Forum.

Laura Didio, director at Giga Group, told silicon.com she was shocked by the results.

"Microsoft is very worried about this, as it means a loss of revenue which it is now trying to make up for by moving to the new subscription licence model.

"Over the last 18 months there have been no showstopping Windows 2000 buys. You can see how few buys there have been by how few problems and bugs have been reported," she continued.

Users are being led on a forced march, accused Didio.

"Customers had to move from Windows 95 to Windows 98 because Microsoft of support" she said. Windows 95 is only supported until the end of the year, Windows 98 support ends next year.

A move to Windows 2000 means a hardware upgrade at considerable expense and in today's economic climate organisations are not willing to do that, she explained. Many organisations told Giga they would wait until 2002 or 2003 before upgrading hardware.

Didio said: "People are willing to be behind the learning curve and not go through the pain." She added that an upgrade to Windows 2000 will result in a 50 per cent productivity rate over a three day deployment period.

Mark Christer, ebusiness manager at Royal & Sun Alliance, agreed.

He said: "There is less money coming through the door so less to spend on IT and the old economy questions still apply - is it a money generator or a money saver?"

Rob Bruce, executive vice president of website development company Interx, added: "There are a lot of people after your money from desktop to business development to those in the e-space and those selling new devices. We have to justify spend as the board want ROI not expenditure."

Giga is also advising clients against waiting to upgrade to Windows XP and continue with any planned Windows 2000 deployments, claiming there is minimal difference between the two desktop systems.

Those who have deployed Windows 2000 spend as much time managing applications and software on their networks as they have when using Windows NT 4.0 for example - despite promises to the contrary from the software giant.

Active Directory also came under fire - branded by organisations interviewed by Giga as 'useless, inefficient, unstable, complex and inflexible'. But Didio said very small and very large organisations are having a better time with the upgrade.

The lack of training for those using the directory services is alarming, said Didio.

"Those networks are like a train wreck waiting to happen. As many as 65 per cent of applicable IT staff are not being trained and 53.3 per cent of organisations are only using in-house resources. Yet the main reason this product is not deployed is complexity."