Leader: Why Vista's going to be a hard sell

From Longhorn to Vista, the journey has been a long one for Microsoft but today Bill Gates and Co. finally launched the new Windows operating system for business users.

For Microsoft there must be mixed emotions about Vista. Sure, every Redmond employee has nothing but good things to say about the new Windows but deep down they must surely acknowledge that Vista isn't anywhere near the great leap that was originally envisioned by Gates back in the days when it was still codenamed Longhorn.

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Microsoft started out with the Windows XP code-base but decided that was going to be too complex and was forced to start again virtually from scratch. This tactical shift, combined with the distractions of the Trustworthy Computing campaign and securing Windows XP - not to mention all those antitrust legal battles - caused the timetable for Vista to slip by two years from a 2004 release.

And that's for business customers. Home users have to wait even longer, until January 2007, for the launch of consumer versions of Vista - meaning Microsoft risks missing the all-important Christmas market. It is this rush to get Vista out in a reasonable timescale, after all the false starts, that has forced Microsoft to drop some of the more important features originally promised, such as the WinFS file system.

As a result Vista is superficially pretty with the new 3D Aero graphics and desktop gadgets but these aren't the kind of things likely to show up on a return-on-investment calculation by businesses considering whether they should upgrade. One analyst has only half tongue-in-cheek suggested that the most compelling reason to upgrade to Vista is because you're going to have to anyway.

Improved productivity from better search, and from the collaboration features in the new Office 2007, are among Vista's big selling points, but for CIOs productivity gains are hard to quantify when trying to justify the cost and upheaval of replacing thousands of PCs and laptops - especially when the Windows XP operating system still meets most of your needs.

Security is one of Vista's stronger selling points. Businesses will no doubt be reassured by features such as BitLocker, which encrypts data on the hard drive, anti-spyware tools and access and authentication controls.

Microsoft is banking on Vista being the fastest-selling operating system it has ever released, claiming 20 per cent of businesses will be running it within the first 12 months of the launch.

Analysts are a little more conservative, with talk of 10 to 15 per cent penetration in the first year, which is closer to the somewhat underwhelming reaction to Vista from silicon.com's CIO Jury panel of IT chiefs, who say Vista is two to three years away for them.

With his usual bravado Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said today at the Vista launch in New York that the OS is a "game-changing product". But Redmond will need more than that to overcome the hard fact that Vista is going to be a tough sell to Microsoft's business customers.