Readers Invest in Familiar Microsoft Apps in 2010 -- Redmondmag.com

Readers Invest in Familiar Microsoft Apps in 2010

Redmond magazine's latest survey shows users upgrading long-standing Microsoft offerings, but not experimenting with newer technologies.

By Lee Pender
01/25/2010

2009 was a year most of us would like to forget. A deep recession and massive job losses crushed the economy as a whole, and ravaged the technology sector particularly hard. Fortunately, 2010 has started well and may be the year in which the economy finally turns around. Even if the economy picks up, however, the technology industry has some serious catching up to do. In October, Gartner Inc. predicted that IT spending would increase in 2010 after a sharp decline of more than 5 percent in 2009 -- but that spending wouldn't reach 2008 levels again until 2012. That's a four-year climb back and a sign that IT budgets, no matter how high stocks go or how low unemployment falls this year, might stay flat for a while.

In late 2009, Redmond surveyed more than 1,000 readers on a wide variety of topics, including spending and migration plans. The survey revealed that companies aren't rushing to take chances with technology budgets. They're investing in trusted Microsoft products and shying away from less-mature offerings.

Where's the Money Going?
The response to one survey question is especially revealing. In answering the question, "How do you anticipate your company's 2010 budget for all Windows-related hardware, software and services will compare to 2009?" readers strongly suggested it won't change much at all.

Almost 30 percent of readers said their budget will not change, period. More distressingly, 28 percent said budgets will decrease in 2010 compared to last year. Just shy of 27 percent of respondents predicted a budget increase.

So, spending is flat or decreasing, but where is the money going? Which Microsoft technologies are priorities for IT departments? Windows 7 is one. Though almost 30 percent of readers said they have "no plans" to roll out Windows 7, 26 percent will start rolling out the new OS in the first half of 2010.

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Another 14 percent report the rollout will begin in the second half of this year. At about 38 percent, the number of respondents planning to move to Windows 7 in 2010 trumps those with no plans to move at all -- and a further 7.5 percent signaled 2011 as the year for a Windows 7 deployment.

Windows 7 has already made its debut in many shops: almost 33 percent are running at least one instance. That compares to 52 percent for Windows Vista and, not surprisingly, nearly 98 percent for Windows XP. A surprising 31 percent of readers still have

Windows 2000 Professional lurking somewhere in their organizations. To Microsoft's likely dismay, nearly 29 percent of respondents report running at least one Mac in the organization.

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Another popular Microsoft technology is Windows Server 2008. More than half of readers report they've either started a rollout or will begin deployment in 2010. Only 22 percent have no plans to implement Windows Server 2008.

The survey showed that old standby Microsoft offerings are doing well. Exchange 2007 is already in place in many respondents' organizations, and it should be rolled or rolling out by the end of this year in more than half of the shops represented in the survey.

There's less certainty about SQL Server 2008. Nearly a quarter of respondents have no plans to move to it, but a greater number will have upgraded by the end of this year. Still, the winner in the SQL-upgrade category is actually "Don't know," which suggests either that readers don't have responsibility for making SQL Server decisions or that there's some hesitation about moving forward with the 2008 version of the server -- or both.

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Readers are interested in the latest versions of Windows, Exchange, Windows Server and -- maybe -- SQL Server. But what about up-and-coming products like SharePoint, or emerging technology categories such as unified communications (UC)? Those products and categories didn't do quite so well in our survey. It's likely that budget pressure is holding back growth in those areas.

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Microsoft and other vendors might be pushing UC, but our readers aren't buying it -- at least not right now. Almost two-thirds have no plans to deploy UC or don't know when their organization will deploy it. A further 12.7 percent are "just starting to explore" UC, meaning only about 20 percent have either deployed UC or have concrete plans to deploy it.

Correction: Mimosa NearPoint for Exchange

In a recent issue of Redmond I wrote an article discussing the merits of several top e-mail archiving products ("Archiving Aces," January 2010). After publication, Mimosa Systems Inc. suggested that I had made some inaccurate statements about its product NearPoint for Exchange. After discussing the company's concerns, I wanted to take this opportunity to clarify some of the statements I made in the article.

Particularly important are comments I made involving product stability and the seamlessness of mailbox archiving to the end user. I want to be clear that I believe NearPoint is a stable product and offers a seamless end-user experience. My comments in this regard were incorrect and based on a misunderstanding on my part.

In addition I wanted to clarify some comments I made that were poorly worded and could have caused some confusion about product functionality. The first comment that needs clarification relates to support for targeting users via LDAP queries and Active Directory Organizational Units (OUs). My intention was to point out that you could not manually enter an LDAP query, and not to suggest that NearPoint did not support LDAP or AD OUs, which it does through the Mimosa administration console.

Second, in an attempt to highlight NearPoint's capabilities, I used the term Exchange API to refer to one of the mechanisms by which NearPoint captures data for archiving. In this case I was referring to its use of Mimosa's Exchange VSS writer, and I do regard this as a great feature of the product. Also, for the sake of brevity, I suggested that one of the benefits of this capture method was to facilitate an excellent single-instance storage (SIS) capability. I want to point out that, while you can't perform SIS without capturing data, the process of eliminating duplication is a distinct process that occurs after capture.

Third, I discussed the introduction of support for Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) content capture in the latest version of NearPoint and suggested that this was to improve WAN performance. Mimosa's position is that this addition of MAPI support improves product flexibility by allowing a centralized deployment of NearPoint even if a customer has a distributed Exchange server environment.

Finally, I wish to point out that I make every effort to ensure that the articles I write are accurate and of use to the IT administrators that are out there in the trenches. I apologize to Mimosa and the readers of Redmond for allowing these inaccuracies to be published.

-- Alan Maddison

More of the Same
While 2010 may bring economic and industry recovery, our survey indicates that it's not likely to bring bigger budgets or more spending freedom. Windows 7 is the only brand-new release that's getting serious attention -- Exchange 2007 and SQL 2008 are hardly new technologies. And Windows 7 is likely getting a look mainly because of Vista's failure and XP's age. For 2010, the theme for Microsoft technology spending seems to be the same as it was in 2009 -- evolution, not revolution.

About the Author

Lee Pender is the executive features editor of Redmond magazine. You can reach him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter.

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