Report Office 2007 demand 'healthier than though

There is quite a bit of distinction of belief as to when and no matter if enterprise users need to upgrade to Windows Vista, but Workplace 2007 isn;t suffering from the same fate.
According to Forrester Study (which has definitely been cranking out the research inside the past couple of days), companies are deploying Office 2007 at a speedy clip. Far more than 40 percent with the 259 IT choice makers in North The us and Western Europe that Forrester surveyed already have deployed Office 2007.
“The adoption of Office 2007 appears a good deal healthier than what people thought,” said Kyle McNabb, principal researcher for the study. “Lots of enterprises are adopting it with Service Pack 1.”
Other findings from Forrester;s “The State Of Microsoft Workplace 2007 Desktop Adoption” examine (which is only available to subscribers to Forrester;s research service): The majority of those surveyed plan to deploy Workplace 2007 within the next 12 months (21 percent immediately, 43 percent within 6 months and 29 % inside of 12 months)
SharePoint Server 2007 is being deployed at almost identical rates and often in tandem with Office 2007.
Of those surveyed, 43 percent said Workplace 2007 rollouts were tied to upgrades in PC hardware
*The release of Office 2007 SP1 “removed a hurdle keeping many from moving forward in calendar year 2007.” Based on conventional wisdom, many companies prefer to deploy new versions of Windows and Workplace at the very same time to reduce costs associated with upgrading to a new release. With Windows Vista and Workplace 2007, however, that rule doesn;t seem to be holding true. As part of the findings of a different survey released earlier this week, Forrester has found organization adoption of Vista to be sluggish, with adoption of Vista by enterprises growing “a tad more than five percentage points during 2007 to end at 6.3%.
(Microsoft doesn;t break out for public consumption the percentage of Vista sales that have gone to businesses vs. consumers.)
I asked McNabb whether any IT pros surveyed as part of this examine expressed any ambivalence about waiting for Office 14 vs. upgrading to Workplace 2007. After all, Workplace 14 is still rumored to be a 2009 release. McNabb said those who were weighing this selection were “fairly considerably in the minority,” a fact he attributed to “Microsoft telling many customers not to expect major changes inside the desktop with Workplace 14.”
And what about Google Apps? Any IT pros surveyed looking significantly at a completely Google-hosted alternative to Office 2007?
“Enterprises are looking at Open Workplace and Google, but they are not yet looking to move to them,” McNabb said. “Less than one percent are giving any real fuel to (Microsoft) alternatives.”