Back on topic (sort of): My customer (an international pharmaceuticals company) has just recently decided to scrap several YEARS of effort invested in a Vista standard desktop in favor of Windows 7. The decision was primarily based on the concern that by the time they are ready to roll-out the next standard in 2010 (timeline is dictated by a 3 - 5 year hardware replacement lifecycle), rolling out an obsolete system (Vista) would be politically unacceptable. So now they've pushed back the whole timeline by 3 - 6 months and will begin Win7 engineering as soon as the RTM is available.
The next challenge, along the same lines, is Office. My project will deliver Office 2007 to almost 100,000 desktops. Because of various dependencies, the project won't be completed until Q3 2010 (ignoring the field sales forces, which will continue into 2011). By the time we're ready to roll out (early 2010), Microsoft will be launching Office 14 (2010). We can't afford to wait for Office2010, but we will have to defend this decision when it comes around.
The relatively short product lifecycles by Microsoft Windows (2000, XP in 2002, Vista in 2006, 7 in 2009) and Office (XP in 2002, 2003, 2007 and 2010) make it impossible for large corporations to keep up. And the idiotic decision to go to the "ribbon" interface in Office 2007 (with no backward compatibility option to enable the "classic" menus) has made the rollout of the new office even more expensive, because of the huge training requirements - many people who are familiar with Windows XP and "older" Office products have problems adjusting to the new ribbons.
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