Cover Story

The Vista Effect

Five years after Windows XP, the latest desktop OS from Microsoft promises better hardware support, security and a spruced up user interface. It also has steeper hardware requirements. By Faiz Askari

Indian businesses are attaching greater value to security, connectivity and speed. Microsoft seems to be of the opinion that it has addressed all these concerns with Windows Vista, the latest iteration of its flagship Windows desktop OS.

"Windows Vista delivers value for business customers by reducing the complexity of IT infrastructure. It is a more secure OS and it retains application compatibility" - Rishi Srivastava Director - Windows Client Business Group, Microsoft India

Elaborating on the key attractions of this new OS, Rishi Srivastava, Director – Windows Client Business Group, Microsoft India says, “Windows Vista delivers value for business customers by reducing the complexity of IT infrastructure. It is a more secure OS and at the same time it retains application compatibility. With Windows Vista, Microsoft has focused upon improving the experience and overall quality of the operating system, providing a more productive business environment.”

The launch of Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange is the culmination of several billion R&D dollars invested by Microsoft over the past five years. From an industry perspective, Maninder Singh, AVP, Business Development, HCL ISD comments, “Vista is a platform that can transform the enterprise end user’s desktop experience. However, it needs a strong services partner to deploy the same.” 

"People are still getting to grips with Vista. They will gradually upgrade to it" - Vinay Shetty Product Manager Component Business Asus India

Vinay Shetty, Product Manager, Component Business, Asus India opines, “Vista is going to bridge the gap between the consumer electronics and IT market segments.”

Where Vista scores

Windows Vista offers enhancement in end-user productivity including the Aero interface; Windows Flip and Flip 3D. It also improves on the XP search function.

For organisations that intend to upgrade to Vista here’s a rundown of it’s significant features or improvements:

• Windows BitLocker encrypts corporate data so that the damage of a lost or stolen laptop is minimised.
• The OS supports granular control over USB devices, location-based printing, centralised power management and hardware independent imaging.
• It’s easier to connect to a wireless network with Windows Sync Centre. Vista gives you a single location from where you can access mobile PC settings, viz. Windows Mobility Centre. Windows Meeting Space facilitates ad-hoc peer-to-peer collaboration.

A plethora of variants

The Vista product family consists of six versions namely Windows Vista Business, Enterprise, Home Basic, Home Premium, Ultimate and Starter for emerging markets.

Apparently this line-up is designed to cater to the diverse needs of its customers including SOHO, SMBs and large enterprises. Meanwhile, the company has plans of bringing a 64-bit, version of Media Centre and Tablet PC to the mainstream.

Shetty says, “People are still getting to grips with Vista. They will gradually upgrade to it.”

Beefed up security

There are several security related features and enhancements in Vista. Srivastava says, “Windows Vista was developed using a rigorous security development lifecycle that hardens the system and ensures application integrity helping organisations secure and isolate their networks.”

While there were altercations between Microsoft and leading security vendors about the former refusing to provide direct access to Vista’s kernel, these appear to have been resolved.

McAfee recently announced that VirusScan Enterprise 8.5 and AntiSpyware Enterprise 8.5 will support Windows Vista.

For developers

Any new desktop OS must have something to interest developers or else there won’t be too many applications shipping on it, at least not any time soon. Srivastava says, “Over the last one year we have reached out to lakhs of developers through workshops, hands-on-labs, webcasts, podcasts, virtual labs and classrooms, magazine articles and newsletters.”

More than 20,000 copies of Vista Beta 2 and RC1 have been distributed in India and that’s not taking 500,000 downloads into consideration. The recent Steve Ballmer Live at IndiMix event that focussed on Vista as a development platform reached more than 250,000 developers. The company is also releasing a Vista development kit with resources for developers in India that would be available for download and distributed via CDs.

Apart from this, HCL has Zero Touch desktop deployment, a closed loop ITIL aligned desktop provisioning tool for Vista.

“This automated process enables enterprises to minimise risk, enhance visibility and reduce desktop deployment costs by over 40 percent. The Zero Touch framework offers centralised deployment of the operating system and packaged applications, automating deployment with hardly any manual intervention being required, ” says Singh.

HCL’s solution aligns Microsoft’s business desktop deployment (BDD) framework from Vista with its IT Service Assurance Model based on ITIL/ISO 20000 and CoBIT Processes.

The Microsoft India Development Centre (MIDC) did some work on Vista, mostly around connecting easily without compromising security. MIDC has also worked to reduce the complexity involved in using features such as digital imaging.

“We expect that in 2007 businesses will adopt Windows Vista faster than the earlier releases on Windows,” claims Srivastava.

Third-parties say

StumpVision’s Scorite is a cricket scoring software, which was recently used in the ICC Champions Trophy. StumpVision’s MatchCast solution is targeted towards cricket fans interested in watching live videos combined with real time or near real time analysis of a specific cricket match in progress.

Dinesh Kumble, Director of StumpVision, says, “The Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) provides the base for building applications in Windows Vista, blending together application user interfaces, documents, and media content. Our solutions take advantage of WPF to deliver a visual interface and special effects for the cricket enthusiast.”

Neeraj Jaitley, General Manager, Technology Infrastructure Services Group at Wipro Technologies says, “Wipro and Microsoft are working together to simplify deployment and migration to Vista. Wipro’s solution is based on Microsoft’s Business Desktop Deployment solution accelerator and is a custom tool designed to address various challenges encountered while deploying Vista onto hundreds or thousands of PCs.”

Competition-speak

"At present the focus in India is on applications. The impact of the OS on the overall cost, flexibility and scalability of a solution is still being understood by CIOs" - Nandkumar Pradhan President and Managing Director, Red Hat

So what is Red Hat’s reaction to the advent of Vista? The company’s President and Managing Director, Nandkumar Pradhan says, “Client computing is focussed around three components - access to the Web and Web technologies, local office productivity software and manageability. Linux offers all three. The development model of open source software lets it stay in sync with or even ahead of market requirements. It does not need a few thousand people to work for five years just to come out with a new version.”

Pradhan adds, “Red Hat would be shortly releasing its Enterprise Linux version 5 which will provide virtualisation.”

Sandeep Menon, Director Linux Business, Novell West Asia, says, “The desktop OS market has always been competitive between Microsoft and the Linux desktop OS offerings. The list of Linux desktop OS providers go beyond Novell SUSE Linux. However, Linux desktop OS has been the realm of enthusiasts and has a small niche community of users.”

Prakash Advani, Linux Practice Head at Novell says, “Vista’s arrival will now drive companies and CIOs to rethink about their IT spending for the coming years. For instance CIOs will have to think about how much budget should be allocated for PC upgrading and for OS upgrades.”

Advani also added, “For the first time in a while, companies now have a choice. They can upgrade to Vista, which also requires an upgrade of hardware resources or use SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 (SLED10), an alternative to Vista that comes at one tenth of the price of Vista. SLED10 comes with the free OpenOffice suite, an open-source productivity tool that is interoperable with MS Office.”

Giving his views on the evolving OS market of India, Pradhan says, “The server OS and desktop OS markets differ. In many ways India is leapfrogging in terms of absorption and adoption of technology to help run businesses and governments. At present the focus in India is on applications. The impact of the OS on the overall cost, flexibility and scalability of a solution is still being understood by CIOs.”

That said, there is an understanding that Linux is a viable choice.