Intel, U.S. government decide to wait on Vista, Office

I know that I'm preaching to the choir here but just in case you somehow didn't already know: most businesses are not deploying Vista. If you're wondering why your shop has been left out of the Aero loving, know that you're in good company--the folks at Intel, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the FAA all feel your pain. Intel has explained their decision using the usual party line for enterprise IT; they won't consider an upgrade until SP1 is released. As a matter of fact, Intel CEO Paul Otellini told attendees at the Bank of America Technology conference that he knew "of no organization doing an upgrade before SP1." Meanwhile, folks at the FAA and the DoT have instituted an "indefinite moratorium" on the new OS, as well as IE7 and Office 2007, with DoT CIO Daniel Mintz publicly explaining that "there appears to be no compelling technical or business case for upgrading to these new Microsoft software products. Furthermore, there appears to be specific reasons not to upgrade."

None of this should come as a surprise, as few enterprises are daring enough to deploy newly-released software--especially when it comes from Microsoft. Still, it bears repeating, in light of Microsoft's constant boasts about how quickly businesses will snap up the latest-greatest. New software is rarely seen as being enterprise-worthy and there's little Microsoft can do to change that perception.

For more on Vista:
- see this Gizmodo article