As far as I see it, Gartner is used by functional executives needing to make a decision about an investment. Say for instance that they’re planning to invest on an SFA software, they’ll take a look at Gartner’s subsequent Magic Quadrant to back their decision.

I still wonder what’s their added value compared to reading a good bunch of (less expensive) IT news magazine…

Olivier> If I understand well, Gartner is just repeating one more time the scenario that has already occurred everytime a new mainstream OS was launched!! On your recommendation to Gartner “would be a better advisor with telling customers how to deploy faster and at the lowest cost”, I’m not sure the people at Gartner are the right people to give such operational advice. Gartner analysts are basically consultants (see their profiles over here: http://www.gartner.com/0_admin/AnalystCoverageAreas.jsp#Software%20Markets).

They’re excellent at providing market summaries, but I’m not sure all of them master the tricks of organization-wide deployments, quite unfortunately indeed…

Hans> I’m not sure you can generalize as such, even though your testimony’s pretty insightful. Montesquieu once said that “all generalizations are dangerous, including this one”;-)

If all customers were listening to Gartner, we’d still be in the 80’s technology-wise. Hopefully, there are courageous customers and end-users who jump early on new technolologies, and try to get the most out of it and OK, support some of the incurred pain.

But upgrading to a new OS is indeed a slow process in the market. What’s interesting is the delay between the btob and btoc launches of Vista/Office 2007. It’s justified by some logistical considerations (it’s easier to ship to developers – through the web – to enterprises with CDs – than in retail with packaged products, there are also some licensing considerations with customers having purchased 3 years long “Enterprise Agreements” that are ending in 06). But in the end, consumers will end up adopting Vista much faster than orgs. Simple math: in the western world, about half of the PCs are sold in home, the other in orgs. But most new home PC shipped in 07 will be with Vista. While most PCs shipped to orgs will be reformated to an old OS by their IT departments (many times even not XP, but only Windows 2000). So, there will be many more Vista PCs in homes than in orgs in 07 and probably 08. Consumers will pressure orgs to adopt Vista, not the other way around. Most large orgs deploy a new OS in a very long cycle – Gartner or not : 1 year of evaluation, testing with hardware and custom applications, then 3 to 5 years of deployments. MS has probably put a lot of R&D efforts in Vista to ease migration, deployments and network administration of Windows in mixed versions environment. But it’s never enough. Legacy is always the greatest burden of IT!

So when Gartner advises customers to be slow in upgrading, they are just saying the obvious! They would be a better advisor with telling customers how to deploy faster and at the lowest cost. Not just with encouraging a “wait and see” attitude.

Btw, to be clear, I am a former MS employee…

To complement your question: I admire both companies, Microsoft for its ability to remain on the roof of the technology world for so long, and Gartner – that I read very often thanks to a subscription I benefit from as an HEC Paris student – for the buzz it manages to create from mere articles, magic quadrants and CIO recommendations. When an executive committee doesn’t know which decision it should make, it goes to Gartner. Wow!

Hope you’re good. Long time no see.

To answer you points one by one:

1) I don’t think Gartner’s report may have had any effect on MS Vista’s schedule. It just seems unlikely that N.3 market capitalization worldwide starts abiding by analysts’ stuff.

2) No, I’m not mixing up business and consumer environments. Gartner says companies should wait to update to Vista. I’m not saying they’re right or wrong, but rather that they should stay away of debates after telling nonsense in such an arrogant way (“Microsoft’s track record is clear”).

Consumer environments come on stage when Gartner says MS made a bad move launching Vista on January 30th: Gartner thinks PC Christmas sales will go down. But if Vista doesn’t matter, then why should it have any impact on PC sales?

This is rather contradictory. In other words, I didn’t mix up B-to-B and B-to-C markets. Gartner did so rather.

3) You’re totally right: 3000 improvements, not innovations. My mistake.

4) Yep on Acer. Same for Dell & Co. But again, looks like MS tried hard to make an effort and allow for low-price (or sometimes free) Vista update download.

And, the message from the front lines of IT seems, at least at the moment, to be that Vista just doesn’t matter. The OS filed has stagnated for so long.

I think you’re mixing up the business environment use and consumer use of Vista. They are different battlefields, the former is unaffected by Christmas release but is affected by a probably poor penetration.

If the 3000 improvements (definelty not innovations) are counted like Apple does, just a new icon is counted as an improvement.

If I remember correctly, it was the OEMs (esp. Acer) who were first up in the arms months ago on Vista’s past-Christmas release, not Gartner.

and really, it’s a real stretch to say that Vista is… on time.