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by Stephanie Neil, MA Editorial Staff   Microsoft Corp. is in the middle of a major marketing campaign designed to drum up interest in its biggest operating system upgrade in six years. Windows Vista, the client side of the company's yet-to-be-named, next-generation server, code-named "Longhorn," is set for delivery to corporate customers at the end of the year. Longhorn and the redesigned 2007 Office system application suite will follow next year. Despite Vista's ties to the desktop, the OS and its associated applications are poised to take a position as an enterprise infrastructure technology rather than a personal productivity tool. Witness Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who talks up the 64-bit technology's collaborative workflow capabilities, retooled security design, rich search functionality, and eye-popping 3D graphics. "Taking advantage of chip improvements allows us to be more ambitious with what the software can do," Gates said during his keynote speech at the Microsoft Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) 2006 in May. During the event he expounded on the importance in a digitized economy of the PC and all of its applications. "As the world globalizes, the tool that allows work to be done anywhere is this software ecosystem running on the PC." He went on to say that the key themes of the next-generation OS and Office system are: simplifying how people work together, communicating, and being able to find things through a rich search capability. It's all very impressive on paper, and even in a live demonstration. But there were some dazed and confused faces in the crowd during a Vista presentation by Microsoft at a recent GE Fanuc Automation meeting in Florida. "People are still trying to decide what it is," says Brian Heble, a systems integration consultant in Lakewood, CO. "And until they do, they don't plan to budge." While Vista and Longhorn have been discussed in IT circles for over a year, the ambiguity of a drastically different operating environment -- not to mention Microsoft's track record of missed ship dates -- has enabled many to avoid the "upgrade" discussion. However, the beta 2 version of Windows Vista and the test versions of Longhorn and Office 2007 are now available. So, it's decision time. But when to switch? And, more importantly: How? Many manufacturers have spent the last five years moving from costly proprietary systems to the promised land of Windows, a lower-cost and easier-to-maintain commercial off-the-shelf technology. Many have followed the lead of their automation vendors, which have reengineered proprietary plant management and control applications around Microsoft's .NET framework, introduced in 2000. Service-oriented architectures, .NET, and XML are some of the essential underpinnings for connectivity between the plant and the enterprise. And Windows, with its ubiquitous user interface (UI), has become the common denominator among disparate IT and production groups. With the introduction of Windows on the plant floor, however, came questions about stability and security. Manufacturers have always cringed at the thought of a Windows crash or an Internet Explorer security breach. Plus, the need to upgrade desktops every 12 months with Windows XP service packs has been a big cause for concern among large, global companies with thousands of desktops to maintain. Vista ups the ante even more. Moving to a new OS dwarfs the scale of installing a security patch. Indeed, it's the difference between an upgrade and a migration strategy, which is what Vista will require. Migration Path Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Enterprise -- the two corporate editions -- replace Windows XP Professional. Each can be installed on either 32-bit or 64-bit processor systems, but they are very different from their XP predecessor. A new UI, called Windows Aero, delivers a transparent glass design that supports animations and Windows Flip and Windows Flip 3D navigation, which makes it appear that a page is being turned. New navigation, search, and workflow features that tap into SharePoint collaboration tools can organize files and search the entire operating system. Page : 1 2 3 4 ... NEXT |