One of the main reasons cited is no time and resources to upgrade. And that is probably strongly related to the current recession.<p>It seems "only human" for people to cut back and save when the economy is bad, but unfortunately that is also the wrong thing to do in order for the economy to recover, and the wrong way to reboot a business. Now is <i>exactly</i> the time for companies to be investing in their futures, and I.T. is one of those major spending areas. With smart spending today, they could be extremely well positioned in a year or two.<p>A related problem is that I've yet to witness an I.T. group that operates incrementally, or in a parallel testing fashion; it seems that everything has to become a snowball in order to happen at all.<p>There <i>are</i> ways to make upgrades perfectly safe, and achievable over a longer period of time when resources are scarce. For example, machines could be upgraded a few at a time in isolation (ideally with a production-like parallel test environment), starting with the more experienced users. And, the culture could evolve to commit to incremental improvements in business applications on a <i>regular</i> basis, so that change is <i>expected</i> instead of being some rare event that scares everyone and threatens to tear the company apart at the seams.
In this 'Current Economic Climate' I wouldn't say any upgrade survey reflects on the product itself.<p>Frankly, I'm surprised 40% would even consider a project of that size.
Allow me to try rephrasing this:<p>"60% of companies say XP is good enough for their purposes."<p>We could get into whether Windows 7 is compelling or not, but perhaps for what most companies need done, XP does it.
Well MS might just end the support on Vista someday and then companies would have to upgrade to 7 or end up with an unsupported product.
Or you buy some new office machines and they'll have 7 preinstalled (so you have to spend extra cash to "downgrade").
I think once you're locked in to Microsoft products it's not entirely up to you if you can "skip".
Another possibility is that XP worked Microsoft out of a "job" (upgrade cycle) by coming, over its life cycle, to be extremely rock-solid.<p>Most upgrade cycles are initiated by a perceived <i>lack</i> of future compatibility in a fairly imminent time frame. If compatibility is expected indefinitely, there just isn't an incentive.
The companies cite "lack of time and resources" as the reason they won't upgrade. What does this include? Training? IT support time? Actual put-the-disc-in-the-machine-and-wait time?