Road show to promote Windows 7, Office 2010 strains to be hip
Microsoft is marketing a road show along the Eastern Seaboard promoting Windows 7 and Office 2010 as though it were an odyssey to a modern day Woodstock.
A video on the “Get on the Bus” Web site stars young, hip, Microsoft techies who’ll be riding the bus from Montreal to Atlanta, between May 21 and June 4, stopping in 10 cities in all and talking to IT professionals trying to decide whether it’s worth their time, money and effort to migrate to the newest Microsoft operating system and office productivity suite. They’re funny, self-deprecating and have all the enthusiasm and energy of kids you see in a Mountain Dew commercial. The video delivers all the quick-editing and funky soundtrack production values of an MTV video, when MTV played music videos.
Does this work for you?
Given that small-to-midsized businesses and large enterprises are struggling to decide whether to do a migration, which can be a monumental task, this “Hey, this will be fun guys” approach strikes me as off the mark.
On the video, Brad McCabe, Windows client senior product manager, while smiling and yukking it up, has a serious message. “This is all about getting out, talking to IT pros and hearing what they have to say and listening to their feedback.”
The agenda at each stop does take participants under the hood of Windows 7, Office 2010 as well as the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) and Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V). The campaign is targeted at shops running Windows XP, presumably on the assumption that Windows Vista users are just getting used to their environment.
Microsoft is also going after shops that still run Office 2003, two generations ago. And it seems Microsoft understands the pain points customers will encounter during a migration, addressing such issues as application compatibility with a feature it calls Application Virtualization, or App-V. It allows a user to run Office 2003 alongside Office 2010 “while they learn and become familiar with the new version,” Microsoft says. Another feature, Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization also allows users to run Windows 7 while still maintaining XP applications with no issues.
After the “Get on the Bus” tour ends in Atlanta, it’s on to New Orleans for the Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference 2010, beginning June 7.
To be sure, IT staff needs to understand the virtues of migrating from XP to Windows 7 or Office 2003 to 2010 in order to pitch to their CIO or CTO a migration project and why it deserves to be in the budget. I trust that while heavy on marketing, the road show will provide information to IT staff on the new software.
Okay, fine, answer my questions, but spare me the “Hey, dude, what’s happening?” shtick.
