Although Microsoft has gone the distance to promote Windows 7 in advance of its upcoming release in October, CIOs are a little more cautious about upgrading their computer environment. Few CIOs say that they will embrace Windows 7 with open arms. Instead, most CIOs plan to keep the product at arms length until they can assess its performance potential, determine whether or not Windows 7 supports a particular organizational need and offers the necessary Windows drivers to support existing and planned hardware.

CIOs Won’t Commit To Immediate Roll Out

2010 doesn’t seem to be the banner roll out year. CIOs who say that they’re considering the product don’t plan to make any major moves until 2011 at the earliest. This may fall in line with Microsoft’s planned service pack update for Windows 7, which is expected at or near the 18-month mark – Spring of 2012.

According to a survey that appears at silicon.com, most CIOs haven’t yet migrated to Windows Vista. It’s not a case of them waiting for the latest OS, but rather a case of having little incentive to migrate to a new OS.

CIOs are less driven to upgrade by the availability of a new product than they are by the upgrade of their application suite. In general, if the applications don’t require the new OS, there’s little incentive to upgrade. Complicating this slightly is the fact that Microsoft will allow its Volume Licensing program enrollees to use whatever version of the Windows operating system they choose.

Individual users may not have much choice. Home users – that is, those users who purchase a “home” version of Windows 7 will not have any downgrade rights. Instead, these users will receive the Windows 7 product. According to Microsoft, there is no upgrade path from older versions of the OS – most notably Windows XP – to Windows 7. A full installation of the new product is required.

This may make the decision to upgrade slightly more difficult for the individual user because there’s no way to “back out” of a migration, short of setting up a dual-boot computer. With the cost of computers in a free-fall, many users may simply opt to purchase a computer with Windows 7 already installed and migrate their files and application to the new computer.

In my experience, Windows Vista has been largely stable in a limited network environment. While it is still befuddled by the occasional unexplained event, it does represent a speed and performance improvement over Windows XP in most cases.

Photo Credit: D.Fickling, via Flickr