Anything but Windoze


According to a just announced study by the Yankee Group, the Windoze desktop operating systems are and will remain the dominant client desktop standard for the foreseeable future. However, the report goes on to say that Apple's Mac OS X and Linux could enjoy excellent growth potential as dissatisfaction with Redmond, it products and often unsavory business practices reaches new highs.

That is the conclusion of a newly released Yankee Group Report, "The Desktop OS: Are There Real Alternatives to Microsoft?," which finds that interest in alternatives to Microsoft's client operating system is at the highest level in over a decade.

Apple's Macintosh has found a comfortable and committed niche among enterprise customers with sophisticated graphics and production departments, noted Yankee Group senior analyst and report author Laura DiDio. Linux, meanwhile, has gained a groundswell of support in the last three to four years due to its appeal as the "un-Windows" solution

"Corporate user resentment and dissatisfaction with Microsoft and some of its practices are at an all-time high," DiDio said.

A myriad of issues ranging from Microsoft's perceived monopolistic practices, hyperbolic marketing, ongoing security woes, and habitually slipping ship dates of major new product releases as well as confusion surrounding the overall .NET strategy have undermined corporate customer confidence. A recent joint survey of 1,500 corporations by Sunbelt Software, Inc and the Yankee Group found that nearly 40 percent of the respondents were so outraged by Microsoft's new licensing scheme that they are actively seeking alternative products.

"This cumulative dissatisfaction will not necessarily translate into corporate defections to rival operating systems. But it does open the door a crack and raises the possibility that Linux and Macintosh OS X can gain new footholds in an overwhelmingly Windows world," DiDio said.

Analysis: This is "good news" in the sense that an authority respected by the industry at large has finally stepped forward to state the obvious. As has been noted numerous times here and elsewhere, Apple's product line is stronger now than it has been in years. Yet, whether the company can execute and deliver the volume and market share growth statistic that will finally silence its critics is another matter entirely.