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Vista in India: Nine months later

Since the official enterprise launch in November 2006, business adoption of Windows Vista has crossed over 600,000 licenses in India. Giants like Infosys, TCS, Satyam and Larsen & Toubro have migrated to Vista. By Faiz Askari

It has been a good nine months for Microsoft’s latest desktop OS in India. As is the case with any major launch of a technology product, Windows Vista’s created a lot of buzz and there was a bit of a backlash about lack of drivers and hardware support issues at the time of the launch. After the initial bout of mixed responses, Windows Vista has ended up making a dent in the Indian market.

One problem faced by Microsoft was that potential users had often formed a judgment of the OS without even using it. The fact is that Vista runs beautifully on new hardware, however retrofitting it onto older XP boxes is not a great idea.

Talking about the initial steps of making Vista visible in the market, Rishi Srivastava, Director Windows Client Business Group, Microsoft India stated, “The first step was to create the ecosystem for a new product. The ecosystem for us basically consists of developers, application providers, resellers and OEMs. It is a humongous task to get this entire ecosystem ready for a new product because what happens is that this forms the platform on which everybody, OEM or ISV, sells products. So, we had a program which started 18 months before and then we got real traction 12 months before the launch (in January 2007) wherein we got thousands of partners, ISVs and millions of developers working on the Windows Vista platform. So, when we launched Vista there were over 1.6 million different peripherals and 2,000 applications which were already ready and certified. If you compare with the past history this was a quantum jump in terms of getting the ecosystem ready.”

Creating a buzz

The first thing to take care of in any product launch, be it for the consumer or the enterprise segment, is to create awareness. People need to know about the product. Nobody would know unless you create the buzz. Srivastava said, “This was the single biggest launch for us in our history as a company and we have done this progressively with every launch. Although the biggest launch we had, of course, was Windows 95 which was amazing.”

He also said, “The buzz was not only about that launch but about the 12 months before the launch when we actually started working on making it a success.”

While describing why Microsoft has invested in creating such buzz, Srivastava said, “Progressively, we had greater interest because a desktop operating system has an impact and influences all kinds of people. It does not only go to an enterprise customer, it goes to a consumer, to a student, to a child, family—basically anybody who is interacting with PCs. So, when we launched Windows Vista, a big focus was there and we created a buzz. In India we had a phenomenal launch. India was actually highlighted as one of the better launches. We had the consumer product that we launched on January, 2007.”

Experiencing Vista

Having deployed Vista in his organization, Shailesh Joshi General Manager IT at Raheja Group shared some of his views on this new OS and how his organization felt about the switch over from XP. Joshi explained that there was no specific reason to migrate to Vista but that it was a decision taken in consideration of the future. He said, “We were upgrading our existing hardware and then decided to go in for Vista. However there was no specific reason to go in for such migration, except for the fact that Vista is the future of computing.”

While elaborating on the user experience on Vista, Joshi added, “We have more than a hundred users of Vista in our organization. Everyone is happy with the performance and the number of Vista users is also quite likely to grow. The OS’ security and search features are widely accepted and admired by our users.”

Tighter security

Windows Vista is the highest-quality, most-secure OS that Microsoft has released to date. Vista had 50 percent fewer critical vulnerabilities than XP SP2 and far fewer critical vulnerabilities than other competing operating systems in the first 180 days after release. Srivastava stated this adding, “In its first 90 days, Windows Vista had fewer security issues (five) than XP (18).

Challenges or limitations of Vista

User feedback is the most important element in improving a product and accepting and incorporating it into the product helps ensure its success. This applies in Vista’s case as well. Sharing his users’ feedback, Joshi said, “It is true up to a great extent that whenever any new interface is been introduced it is taken negatively by new users. The more that they get their hands on the experience of that solution, the more that they gets used to it. We have observed the same in the case of Vista. However, there were some early issues like compatibility of Vista with various drivers. The other challenge with regard to Vista was the memory requirement. It is difficult for existing users to migrate to Vista if their system are of an older configuration.”

Compatibility: applications and devices

While elaborating what Microsoft has so far achieved in making Windows Vista more compatible with devices, Srivastava underscored the following points:

• More than 40 critical enterprise applications have been updated to be compatible since launch, including those from Cisco, Nortel, Adobe, McAfee, Symantec, Citrix, Oracle, Tivoli, SAP, IBM and others, and more are being resolved quickly
• More than 150,000 downloads of the Application Compatibility Toolkit have taken place (it helps take inventory of and remediate line-of-business applications)
• Over 2,000 applications carry the “Works with Windows Vista” and “Certified for Windows Vista” logos
• 2.1 million devices are supported covering nearly all known devices (over 90 percent). This number is expected to grow to 4.2 million devices by 2010
• Apple iTunes, Adobe Acrobat and Flash all work today
• Five out of the top five consumer security solutions have versions available for Windows Vista

The TCO Factor

Microsoft has claimed that Vista can reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and productivity enhancements are also possible. Joshi said, “We have seen this statement being converted into reality in our environment when we have actually witnessed that productivity levels have gone up. In this, the search feature plays a key role in cutting the time lost in searching for files, documents etc on a computer. This application is very good and has made its mark amongst users.”

Commenting on one of the biggest Vista deployments in India, Srivastava stressed on why Infosys chose Vista for its infrastructure. He said, “Infosys is in a cutthroat business, especially with the Indian Rupee appreciating. Cost has become a big issue for them. They did a TCO study along with IDC where they figured out that on every desktop that they have in the company they would save $86 per annum just by shifting to Vista. This is why they are deploying Vista so quickly.”

However, there has also been a research study on reduction of TCO through Vista. The Wipro - GCR Custom Research Study on the reduction of TCO on Windows Vista has resulted in some data specifically on this. According to a study conducted by Wipro Technologies and GCR Custom Research (the study was commissioned by Microsoft), the annual cost of running Windows Vista on mobile PCs is less than that of Windows XP. As per the study deploying Windows Vista on mobile PCs can reduce the TCO by up to $605 (Rs 24,200) per mobile PC per year—a saving of 14 percent when compared to Windows XP. The TCO for XP was Rs. 1,80,687 while that of Windows Vista was Rs. 1,55, 882—a difference of about Rs 25,000. However, according to the study, three sources help to reduce TCO—Windows Vista Enterprise out of the box features, infrastructure optimization best practices, and Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP).

According to the study, a Windows Vista upgrade alone helps a user save Rs 10,291 per year because of security enhancements and hardware and software benefits. The researchers arrived at these estimates after taking into account the annual cost of hardware, software, IT labor and all other user costs.

What next

Srivastava said that sometime in early 2008, the first service pack of Windows Vista will arrive in the market. “Our technical team is working towards bringing service pack 1 for Vista. This will most likely hit the market by February 2008.” However, he also added, “This will just be a service pack, it will not be a new version. By adopting this service pack, users of Vista will get an enhanced user experience on their exiting OS. However, there will be no additional features in this service pack.”

Like its predecessors, Vista will make its way onto desktops through new product purchases. With its memory requirements, installing it on older hardware does not make sense. However, with PC sales (and more so notebook sales) growing at a fast clip, corporate and consumer adoption of Vista will only grow in the coming year.