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| Innovating The Next Big Thing | September 6, 2010 |  |
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Technology Pundits: Windows Vista SKU's: Big Improvement
Feb 5, 2009 – By Rob Enderle Vista had a lot of issues. One of the bigger problems was the number of different Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) that the product put on the shelf. Customers were confused and confusion leads to low sales. In addition, Microsoft inadvertently gave Apple a significant advantage which helped them penetrate business accounts. The current plan, eliminates many of the choices and focuses most customers on two, a consumer version and a business version. Vista Issues In the Vista timeframe there not only were multiple SKUs but a lousy path between the business and consumer products. This provided Apple with a significant advantage in that the MacOS, due to Active Directory support which the Consumer Vista SKUs lacked, actually had an easier path into corporations than Vista consumer products did. Most big operating system migrations (Windows 2000 being the Y2K exception) have been driven by the user and Vista broke that. To get business support you either had to reinstall a different version of Vista (losing some of the consumer parts) or you had to buy the incredibly expensive ultimate edition. In addition, in stores, you had Basic Edition, Premium Edition, and Ultimate and consumers didn't know which to buy creating confusion and slowing sales. Finally, Ultimate, which promised a number of additional benefits, didn't really deliver damaging any advocacy that might have driven that product. Windows 7 Improvements In with Windows 7 in US and EU retail there will be two versions, Premium and Professional, and Professional is a superset of Premium and there will be a an upgrade path that doesn't require reimaging the system. This is so, should someone buy Premium and need Professional, they can pay a nominal charge (not yet announced) and get the extra business bits to more than offset the Mac advantage with Windows Vista. Ultimate/Enterprise is now basically an Enterprise SKU and will be directly sold to Enterprise customers, given the additional parts largely tie into unique products mostly used by large corporations that require centralized administration to work while there is an upgrade path to Ultimate I'm having trouble finding any real scenarios where someone would use it. Windows Basic will be sold in emerging markets (which can't afford premium), in some markets it may be the only version sold. Starter will be positioned against Linux at the very bottom of the market largely at education and for OLPC kinds of initiatives. My guess is that most Netbooks in the US will have Premium or possibly Professional (when business Netbooks show up). Wrapping Up So, while there are a lot of SKUs, the consumer won't see or want the majority of them. Enterprises will still be focused on one (Enterprise). In retail there will be only 2; a Premium and a Professional, down from 4 which were Basic, Premium, Business and Ultimate. And there is now a clear upgrade path to Professional from Premium where there wasn't from Vista Premium to Business mitigating the inadvertant Apple advantage. While a lot of us would likely prefer one, this is vastly better than it was and buyers should be able to more easily choose the product they need. Courtesy Technology Pundits. » Send this article to a friend... » Comments? Tell us what you think... » More Analyst Insights articles... 
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