With Windows Server 2008 waiting in the wings, a new customer survey by a major Microsoft reseller finds swelling demand for the new system.
CDW’s survey was conducted between October 31 and November 7, 2007 and polled 772 IT professionals who were already familiar with Windows Vista.
Of the IT professionals surveyed, “63 percent say their organization will upgrade to Windows Server 2008, with 18 percent already implementing or making their plans to do so,” according to a statement by CDW.
Interestingly, 66 percent of those who said they plan to upgrade also said that they are not linking deployment of Windows Vista to their plans to deploy Windows Server 2008.
That’s not surprising, according to one analyst.
[cob:Related_Articles]”My expectation is that people are going to be more likely to deploy Windows Server 2008 pretty soon after its release [than they were with Vista],” Michael Cherry, lead analyst for operating systems at research firm Directions on Microsoft, told InternetNews.com.
There is one potential plus that survey participants didn’t know about at the time. Because it uses some of the same core software as Windows Vista, Server 2008 will ship with Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1) already installed, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed Tuesday.
“Since Windows Vista SP1 just released, we included it in the final version of Windows Server 2008 as well,” the spokesperson told InternetNews.com in an e-mail. “This makes it easier on customers and partners, who will not need to download SP1 on their own,” she added.
However, that’s slightly confusing, Cherry said, since it’s not actually a service pack to fix things specific to Windows Server 2008.
Windows Server 2008 was released to manufacturing in early February, and Microsoft has said it will be generally available for sale on March 1. Volume licensing customers with Software Assurance or Enterprise Agreements can download the server near the end of February.
Microsoft’s “Heroes Happen Here” launch gala for Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008, is coming up next Wednesday in Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, Microsoft also announced Tuesday it has released another community technology preview of SQL Server 2008. Final delivery of Microsoft’s flagship database has been delayed until the third quarter of the year.
