Few businesses interested in early adoption of Windows 7

A survey by Dimensional Research unveils 83 percent of businesses won't deploy Windows 7 until at least 2011. The report says 42 percent of organizations plans to deploy Windows 7 within 12 to 24 months of release, 24 percent would wait 24 to 36 months, and 17 percent would wait more than 36 months to make the jump.

76 percent of the IT professionals surveyed have concerns about deploying Windows 7, with the biggest worry (88%) being application compatibility. However, oddly enough around fifty percent of those surveyed by Dimensional Research said they've considered switching to another operating system to avoid Windows Vista or Windows 7.

The survey, of more than 1,100 IT professionals, is one of the first extensive looks at Windows 7's early sales prospects. It found that a whopping 83% of enterprises plan to skip the OS in its first year. While the business market typically tends toward caution when it comes to new products, the figure is nonetheless surprising given that almost no large companies migrated to Vista and as a result most have been using XP much longer than planned.

"The majority of participants do not plan to upgrade to Windows 7 in the next year. Economic factors are contributing to the delay in Windows 7 adoption for almost half of all participants. Software compatibility is the most frequently cited concern with Windows 7," notes the study, which was carried out by Dimensional on behalf of systems management appliance vendor KACE. KACE's KBox appliance is designed to help IT managers more easily deploy Windows, Mac, and Linux software across the enterprise.