Microsoft will next week release the business edition of Vista, the long-awaited latest incarnation of the Windows operating system.

There has been plenty of build-up to the launch of Vista, and much discussion about the functionality it will deliver.

The figurehead for the UK’s launch, which will include Office 2007 and Exchange 2007, is Gordon Frazer, the firm’s newly appointed UK managing director.

Frazer anticipates Vista will sell quicker than any other version of Windows.

‘We expect Vista to be the fastest adopted operating system we have ever released,’ he told Computing.

‘Within the next year there will be more than 100 million PCs deployed with Vista – that is a huge percentage and much faster than XP and other versions.’

Vista’s new features include previously unseen embedded functionality such as new security mechanisms and embedded search technology allowing users to more easily locate documents or information on their hard drives.

‘We realised it was easier to find things on the internet than on your hard drive,} said Frazer.

He believes there are three main reasons users should upgrade to Vista.

The first is its underlying engineering which includes power management capabilities, encryption, and so on. The second is functionality, including areas such as integrated search, and the third is Vista’s graphics. Frazer describes the operation system as ‘visually stunning’.

Microsoft believes businesses will be keen to upgrade to take advantage of these new features and functions.

‘Take security, for example,’ said Frazer. ‘A chief information officer at a financial services company loses 100 notebooks a month. The cost of the PC and loss of information and the potential risk of that information being used for ID theft is a real issue.

‘BitLocker (Vista’s encryption technology) enables you to encrypt the hard drive using chip technology so the notebook can only be accessed using biometrics or chip-and-PIN.’

The operating system is already in use by several as yet unnamed customers, and Frazer says results of trials show Vista will generate significant savings.

‘Direct feedback from customers with mixed bandwidth environments, so from very high bandwidth to very low, has helped us think about how that works and how through compression technology we can save them millions in the way they communicate,’ he said. ‘One organisation can save £100m in communications using Vista.’

Whether these claims come to fruition remains to be seen, but not all customers are happily rubbing along with Microsoft’s release strategy.

Under the terms and conditions of the company’s controversial Software Assurance licensing scheme, users are entitled to free upgrades. The delay has forced some firms to postpone their system upgrades while they wait for Vista.

Frazer says Software Assurance is not just about upgrades, but also training and enhancements,

‘We have to develop and set these expectations clearly,’ he said. ‘With Vista I think we have been pretty good about explaining these expectations.’

But analyst David Bradshaw, principal analyst at Ovum, says customers that have only subscribed to Software Assurance for its upgrade path will be disappointed.

‘It has been almost five years since the last operating system was released, and if the sole reason to sign up to Software Assurance was for the upgrades, you are going to be pretty fed up,’ he said.

Bradshaw says companies that take

advantage of the training offered under the Software Assurance scheme are less likely to be bothered by the delay, but recommends that all users try to negotiate a discount with Microsoft.

He says it is only a matter of time before all Windows users have to upgrade to Vista, but warns businesses to wait and see how robust it is, and let any creases be ironed out before they do so.

‘No organisation in its right mind would think about going to Vista until it has carried out significant testing of the released version,’ he said.

Frazer’s future vision

Prior to Frazer’s appointment as Microsoft’s UK managing director, he headed the company’s South African operation for four years, a market he says is very different to the UK, describing it as a combination of the first and the third worlds.

He has spent the first few months in his post getting to know key customers and partners, and says he is now ready to start focusing on other business goals, among them looking at how to increase the contribution of IT to the UK economy.

‘We are looking at how we pull together as a business, and through collaboration with other partners think about what we can do about driving broader economic impact of IT,’ said Frazer.

‘We have 32,000 partners in the UK and they collect £8bn GDP, per annum. This is obviously significant when you have that the total IT contribution is £20bn. We are starting to think about how we can work together to drive the knowledge economy in the UK.’

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