Windows 7 and Apple: Both Winning In Big Business?
The survey, involving 100 IT executives representing Fortune 1000 companies, reinforced some recent IT trends:
A large number of corporations seem ready to show Windows 7 some love. But here’s the twist: Many of those same corporations say they’ve increased spending with Apple, according to a recent Goldman Sachs survey of Fortune 1000 IT executives. Here are some quick details.
The survey, involving 100 IT executives representing Fortune 1000 companies, reinforced some recent IT trends:
- Continued investments in servers and virtualization.
- Plus, 94% of survey participants said their companies will move to Windows 7.
The big question: When will those Windows 7 migrations take place?
- Roughly one-third of the Windows 7 deployments will kick off in 2010.
- Roughly 28% of the migrations will start in 2011.
- The holdouts will begin migrations in 2012 and 2013 — since Windows XP support is officially dead come April 2014. Goldman is quoted saying that 2013 is the “de facto deadline for Windows 7 upgrades.”
More good news for Microsoft: 36% of respondents expect their companies to increase spending with Microsoft. That’s up from 15% and 14% over the last two surveys, respectively.
Impressive. But here’s the big twist: CIOs are paying more attention to Apple. Even though Apple commands a tiny section of the enterprise market, the survey reported that Apple “was a share gainer for the 11th consecutive time in this survey as companies and employees continue to adopt the Mac.”
Plenty of folks are now weighing in with their perspectives about the survey. Find more opinions over on ComputerWorld, PCWorld and CNET.
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But do you get a good idea of what’s happening with the world economy just by looking at the Fortune 1000? I don’t think so. Most of the world’s GDP comes from small businesses, not big ones.