IDC, in a paid for piece of research (put tongue firmly in cheek) undertaken for Microsoft claims that Windows VIsta will be a big money spinner for hardware and software vendors, resellers and support people in the EU. Some revealing data points:
Among the countries studied (all figures are for 2007):
- Vista will ship 30 million units, 2007
- IT spending €214 billion
- Packaged software spending €42.8 billion
- IT employment 5.2 million
- Software related IT employment 2.8 million
- Windows Vista will provide a +20% increase in IT employment (+100K total jobs, 50K Vista related)
- For very € if Vista spend, IDC estimates €7.35 on hardware, €3.43 on software and €2.53 on services: total €13.31/€ on Vista.
- Partners should invest €4.8 billion by end 2007 readying products and services around Vista
IDC says:
IDC research supports the idea that the more partners invest in Windows Vista, the more that investment will pay off…The IDC research shows that the launch of Windows Vista will precipitate cascading economic benefits, from increased employment in the region and increased taxes to a stronger economic base for those 150,000+ local firms that will be selling and servicing products that run on Windows Vista. At least a million IT professionals and industry employees in the region will be working with Windows Vista in 2007.
All of this sounds great for the industry but what about those who could be forced into consuming all this spend? This is not a trivial upgrade, as IDC acknowledges through its numbers. And history shows that upgrades don’t produce great payback. M$ will argue there’s a ton of stuff that Vista includes that makes life easier. Maybe so.
But I’ve not seen anything in Vista that I could not get for free or for low cost right now, while preserving the benefits I already have in sunk IT investments. That’s innovation currently available. Erik Keller, in a report produced April this year said:
If buyers bite, the next-generation of application and platform upgrades from the mega-vendors may suck all the innovation oxygen out of IT budgets during 2008-2011
Here’s an alternative scenario:
- SaaS really does take off as customers realise that the cost shift outweighs any of the spurious data security arguments.
- Open Source evangelists recognise an opportunity to make the case for community developed products and services.
- Enterprise class developers realise that the cost of pulling their customers over to Vista related versions is way too high, given they are already asking customers to make costly changes with stuff like SOA related spend
Technorati Tags: Microsoft
