Gartner analysts didn’t officially weigh in on my Vista Budget Vacuum discussions, but they did say something even more interesting: put Vista off until 2008. One way to avoid pain is just to delay doing what will give you that pain, and Gartner seems to think that’s a great idea. Even more bizarre, they suggest waiting until 2008 even if you’re running Windows 2000 right now. Gartner feels you need a year to 18 months to get a grip on Vista well enough to roll it out to full scale production. Rollout pricing will probably be much easier to swallow by then as well. I have to give credit to Microsoft for pushing vendors to lower hardware prices. Remember when megabytes of RAM were $100 each? I do, but my children say it’s because I’m old. Yes, it wasn’t until my third personal computer that I got a hard disk (a whopping 10 MB as in Mega Bytes, not Giga Bytes), so I can’t argue the fact I’ve been doing this for some time. I also remind my children my hair didn’t start going gray until they were around. Wonder if there’s a connection?
Another Gartner article says IT people still don’t understand they need to speak intelligently about business topics, especially those within their own companies. Yes, as I’ve learned from the rantings of many Slash Dot fans who don’t even read clearly before they start howling, many IT people need to be more civilized and business like. On the other hand, I’m tired of hearing business executives whine about their IT people not knowing business topics, then in the next breath asking their secretary to print out their e-mails. This knowledge business goes both ways. No modern business can function today without IT, just as they can’t function without phones (that’s IT) and electricity (controlled by IT). Executives who don’t work well with their IT department soon won’t have much of a business.
