Windows Vista Migration 101

Gartner analyst Michael Silver discusses Vista security issues and migration pitfalls and what you should be doing now to avoid problems.

By Dave Gradijan

December 04, 2006 — CSO — CSO: At the Gartner Conference in San Diego in June, Gartner recommended that enterprises consider a phased migration beginning in 2008. Why 2008, and is this still Gartner’s recommendation?

Michael Silver: It’s really important to understand where the 2008 date comes from. It’s not when you would start working on a migration, but it will take most organizations 12 to 18 months to do all the preparation that they need to do leading up to a migration that starts for mainstream users in 2008. To really begin your migration in 2008 for most of your users, you’ll need to begin pretty soon by taking a look at your applications and working with your application vendors to understand when they’re going to support Windows Vista and with what versions of their products.

What types of questions should they be asking their vendors?

Well, there’s two pieces to application support. The first is, "Will my application work?" That’s something they should be asking their vendors and verifying for themselves as well. The second piece is when will the vendor actually support them on Windows Vista for a specific application, and on which version? If it’s not the version they’re using, that means that they may need to take a look at upgrading as well, which could delay the project or make the planning phase take longer. If the vendor is not planning on supporting Windows Vista for their product for some time, and the organization really needs to use that product, that could be a showstopper. Organizations need to decide how critical these products are and for more critical products, they may decide that the risk of moving to Vista without a safety net, without the vendor officially supporting that product on Vista, may actually be too high.

How long should the evaluation phase be when you’re considering a migration?

It’s evaluation, but it’s also testing, building images and doing pilots. So that’s where we believe this 12-to-18-month time line comes in. You’re not actually doing headstand work that whole time. Part of that time you may actually be waiting for some of your application vendors to support Windows Vista. The larger application vendors should support Vista relatively quickly, but as you start looking at smaller vendors and more vertical applications, it’s certainly likely that those vendors won’t support Windows Vista right out of the box and you may

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