Vista's uptake on plant floors will be based on security, graphics, and ... Office 2007

Just how fast will Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista operating system (OS) catch on among manufacturers? The answer depends on whether you go strictly by early analyst projections, or factor in intangibles such as the push Vista is expected to get from the 2007 Microsoft Office System as enterprises seek to get more productivity from information workers.

Framingham, Mass.-based analyst firm IDC, for instance, believes Vista will face a much more conservative adoption curve among businesses than consumers (see Vista uptake predictions). Meanwhile, Vernon Hills, Ill.-based computer reseller CDW surveyed more than 750 IT professionals last fall about Vista plans, and found that while 86 percent plan to upgrade to Vista, only 20 percent plan to upgrade within the next 12 months.

Granted all these findings are early, since Vista has only been in general release since January 30. Experts believe Vista's momentum in manufacturing could accelerate later this year as users begin to appreciate its capabilities, as well as those offered by Office 2007. Among these are stronger security for plant-floor applications, better merging of enterprise and office productivity software, and new features in areas such as 3D visualization.

Enhanced security may be Vista's biggest boon at the plant level. Chris Colyer, Microsoft's worldwide industry director for manufacturing operations, says a January 2007 meeting between Microsoft and the Microsoft Manufacturing User Group (MS MUG) revealed Vista security as a key topic for the 140 attendees.

Because Vista has features such as User Account Control (see Vista security features) that make the OS more secure, the thinking is that fewer security patches will be needed. This more inherent security is of special interest to IT managers responsible for Windows-based plant operations software, says Colyer.

“Manufacturers have plant-level systems running 24/7 that they don't want to shut down,” says Colyer. “Running patches may require a machine reboot, which means downtime, or the potential for downtime. So in this environment, the ability to minimize patches becomes an issue.”

Manufacturers and Microsoft's plant operations software partners have devised better procedures for validating applications against patches—and better test infrastructure so systems can stay running—but ultimately, IT managers want fewer patches. “Vista is going to bring manufacturers a much more hardened OS,” maintains Colyer. “This is the primary reason we will see an uptick for Vista on the manufacturing operations side.”

Performance is another reason Vista will appeal to manufacturers, says Russ Agrusa, president and CEO of ICONICS, whose human machine interface (HMI) product—GENESIS32—has been rearchitected to take advantage of Vista. Agrusa says Vista offers better visualization because it exploits the powerful graphics chips found in today's PCs. Vista also supports 64-bit computing.

These advantages, says Agrusa, mean Microsoft partners whose applications have a strong visual component—such as HMI software—can deliver systems with crisper graphics. An HMI display for a large plant or refinery, for example, could have a 3D display of an overall facility that could instantly zoom down on lifelike 3D graphics of an individual piece of equipment with the ability to pan and rotate for different views.

“One of the biggest issues with HMI and supervisory control systems is performance—meaning how quickly can you click on a button and visualize information,” he says. “With Vista, we can boost performance while increasing the effectiveness of the visual experience.”

Agrusa says ICONICS has invested heavily in optimizing its HMI for Vista, and expects user adoption to be rapid—possibly faster than the migration from 16-bit to 32-bit Windows HMIs back in the 1990s.

Bob Parker, a VP of research for IDC's Manufacturing Insights, says Vista's 64-bit capabilities and strong graphics could create relatively stronger uptake for the OS in the CAD and engineering simulation workstation market. In this market, he notes, some vendors already have Vista-based applications. “As more of those [design] solutions become available on Vista, I think you'll start to see manufacturers looking at those, but it might be January 2008 before you see substantial adoption in this market.”

In general, says Parker, manufacturers tend to be conservative in adopting new technology, and likely will wait until Vista has gone through a Service Pack update or two before they deem the OS as the corporate standard for new PCs. On the other hand, he says, the “refresh cycle” for PCs has lengthened during the last couple of years as businesses have awaited Vista.

“Because of the longer refresh cycle we are seeing, I think there will be a bit of a surge for Vista once we are through that service pack stage, but we are six months away from that sort of impact,” says Parker.

Another driver for PC investments is the release of Office 2007, which coincided with Vista's release. Some observers believe interest in Office 2007 will speed investment in Vista and new PCs as enterprises look to take advantage of Office 2007's improved ability to tap into information in enterprise systems.

For instance, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007—a portal capability for Office users—has a data repository called the Business Data Catalog (BDC) that enterprise software vendors can use to link data in their systems with the portal. Office 2007 documents are saved as XML, which makes it easier for enterprise software vendors to integrate with Office applications.

While Microsoft and SAP have driven this merging of enterprise and office productivity software with SAP's Duet solutions, other enterprise vendors are using technology such as XML and SharePoint's BDC to drive similar integration.

Chris Kelley, a VP with product life-cycle management (PLM) vendor UGS, says such technologies can be used, for instance, to automatically link product characteristics in a Word or Excel document with characteristics in a PLM system. “The Office 2007 opportunity ties back to delivering on the promise of connecting nonengineering users to the PLM process,” Kelley says.

This integration trend, says Parker, is meant to enable better decision-making for information workers. While it's hard to put a number on what the trend will mean for Vista adoption, it's likely to play in the OS's favor.

“A big emphasis in manufacturing IT is faster, better decision-making,” says Parker. “It's about putting the information you already have to work. So the prospects of using a familiar interface like Excel to get more from existing enterprise information will act as another check mark for doing a [PC] refresh and taking Vista in as part of that.”