Apple Inc (AAPL)

[roni]

Vista Worries Cause Businesses to Consider Macs and Linux
By Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
November 20, 2007

A recent survey shows that 44 percent of businesses are considering Mac OS and Linux rather than switching to Vista.

KACE, a systems management appliance company, announced on Nov. 19 that its new survey revealed that 90 percent of the Windows users are concerned about migrating to Vista, and that 44 percent would consider deploying Macs or Linux-based systems to avoid Vista migration.

While Microsoft claims that Vista deployments are increasing, analysts, such as Forrester, observe that business Vista adoption has been going extremely slowly and that Linux is becoming a serious contender for the enterprise desktop.

KACE, which focuses on system management rather than having its own dog in the desktop operating system wars, sells system administration appliances that run on FreeBSD. Its appliances can be used to mange both desktops and servers running Windows, Linux, Solaris and Mac OS.

In response to concerns about unwanted complexity to their heterogeneous IT environments, 44 percent of respondents reported they would consider deployment of alternative operating systems, such as Macintosh and Linux, to avoid migrating to Vista. A mere 13 percent see their company moving all its desktops to Vista. Of those who consider using alternative operating systems, 89 percent said it would be beneficial to use a single systems management interface to manage all types of operating systems in their environments.

In a follow-up story, in eWEEK Careers, Howard Graylin, a senior technical analyst in Ridgeland, Miss., echoed the concerns of many IT staffers when he said: "Personally, I'm dreading the amount of time it'll take to upgrade each machine from a hardware standpoint—adding memory or whatever—and from an operating system upgrade. It's just time consuming."


http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,2219589,00.asp