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Microsoft will release just one more build of Windows Vista for testing before the code goes gold, said Brad Goldberg, the general manager for the Windows client business group.
That build will be made available to a limited group of between 50,000 and 100,000 testers in October, and follows the interim Vista build that Microsoft released on Sept. 22.
Goldberg declined to say if this final test build would be known as Release Candidate 2, adding that the company is focused, from an engineering perspective, on targeting the group of testers from whom it most wants one last set of feedback.
Goldberg, who was on a cross-country tour in late September designed to get the message out about the business value and benefits that Vista brings, also said Vista is on track for availability to businesses via volume licensing in November, with broad general availability to consumers set for January 2007.
Microsoft said it expects 10 times more seats of Windows Vista to be deployed at launch, with deployment within the first year being twice as quick as that for any other version, and business customers deploying it faster than for any other Windows operating system release, he said.
“We have differentiated how we are delivering the product for customers, which is evident in the clear differentiation we have between the SKUs for business and for consumers. Business will be a big focus for us for the remainder of this year, and we will then start talking a lot more on the consumer side next year,” Goldberg said.
Windows Vista has been built for businesses, from the very beginning onward, and is also providing the tools and services that businesses need to help them adopt the operating system earlier than they have in the past, he said.
“From the earliest stages of Windows Vista engineering development, we had a core group of customers who would come up every few months and spend a few days with the team, reviewing early builds and giving feedback. That was then expanded to 500 TAP [Technology Adoption Program] customers to get business requirements into the product,” he said.
The number of TAP customers for Vista is 10 times larger than for previous versions of Windows, he added.
Microsoft also looked at what it needed to do with tools, like the application compatibility toolkit, which was historically developed after the product was finished. In Vista these tools were developed in conjunction with Vista, he said.
Microsoft has also learned some lessons from its experience with Windows XP and the primary inhibitors to Windows XP, which included issues with internal and third-party application compatibility, the perception that the cost outweighed the perceived benefits to be gained, as well as the hardware compatibility issues.
“This was all impactful for us, and we took that feedback and drove it into the Vista development process in terms of how we thought about engineering and working with customers to address the issues during the development cycle,” Goldberg said.
Vista is also designed to address the key changes taking place in the overall business environment, which includes unprecedented volumes of data available to users on their machines, the corporate Intranet as well as the Internet, estimated at more than 170TB, he said.
But this volume of data often resulted in efficient searches, and IDC research shows that the average information worker spends 3.5 hours a week looking for information they never find. They also spent three hours a week creating content that already exists, he said.
On the hardware front, there is a notable shift toward laptops in countries like Japan and the United States, and most corporate data resides on computer hard drives, he said, noting that the growing number of laptops increases the risk for the loss of corporate data.
“Last year alone some 6,000 laptops were lost in the U.S., and research shows that 80 percent of company data is stored on a users PC,” he said.
There has also been an increased focus on the regulatory environment and the accompanying need for compliance, while security breaches are also on the rise.
“Windows Vista and the value it brings is squarely aimed at all this,” Goldberg said.
The new search capabilities in Vista will probably have the single biggest impact on users in terms of how they use their PC, with the new search pane allowing them to search and access the data in their documents, e-mails, and files more quickly, recover deleted and overwritten files, as well as simplify remote access to their applications.
Vista also brings a new default “sleep” state, where the computer moves in and out of this mode in just a few seconds, while the length of time for startup and shutdown has also been reduced, he said.
Asked about the concern that Vista would require new hardware to run, Goldberg said that is not the case.
“Much of the experience will be available to those with older hardware, even that which is not able to run the new Aero user interface,” he said.
Businesses also tend to buy new hardware every year as a way to manage their desktop refresh.
“I believe that most organizations will look at Windows Vista initially on new machines, followed by upgrading existing machines and wipe and load,” Goldberg said.
Next Page: Transitioning from offline to online.
Transitioning from Offline to
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Vista also brings changes when a user transitions from offline to online.
Now, offline documents will be synchronized in the background and be less visible to the user, he said, while IT will be better able to customize the number of folders that can be set to be redirected.
Security had also been one of the top design points from the start, not just in terms of reducing vulnerability to attack, but creating multiple layers of security and including anti-phishing protection as well as the work around BitLocker drive encryption.
For the IT professional, Vista brings significant changes in terms of image management, and moves to a single image across language and form factor and allows greater control with regard to custom group policies, such as the level at which USB Flash drives can be blocked.
Vista also brings a new diagnostics platform that gives better warnings and clear directions to users when things are not working the way they are expected to.
“If you are in Internet Explorer and you get a message that you cannot connect to a Web page, you can pull down a menu and diagnose your network connections and see what the issue is. If your hard disk is about to fail, you will get a message warning you of this and telling you what the steps are you need to take,” Goldberg said.
Asked about customer concerns about the cost, complexity, management and implementation challenges that came with the release of not just a new operating system, but also of Office 2007 as and Exchange 2007 around the same time, Goldberg acknowledged that some customers are concerned and still trying to determine what their migration path should be.
However, most customers like the idea of Vista and Office 2007 being available at the same time, because that means they would only have to test the desktop once and would result in their adopting them faster.
“There are also a lot of scenarios that overlap naturally between the two products,” he said.
With regard to the question of how Vista and Office 2007 will work with previous versions, say Windows XP with Office 2007, Goldberg said that Office XP would be compatible with and run on Windows Vista.
“We have tried to design the products so that those customers who want to keep one product current and move to the new version of another will definitely see a set of benefits in each case,” he said.
The application compatibility toolkit had also, for the first time ever, been developed in parallel with Vista and would be released alongside it.
With Windows XP, for example, it was released with the second service pack some nine months later.
Microsoft is also approaching the certification of applications differently with Vista: There is the “works with” designation that indicates the application will work with and run on Vista.
Internally, Microsoft has done internal testing on some 1,900 external applications since the release of the first Vista beta.
The “certified for Windows Vista” designation, which has a higher bar, is for those applications that exploit and take advantage of Vista in a unique way, Goldberg said.
Asked whether Microsoft is pushing ahead with Vista outreach in Europe, even though it has said the product could be delayed there unless the European Commission gives it more guidance on whether Vista complies with European competition law, Goldberg would only say that the company is fully committed to providing a version of Vista that is fully compliant with European law.