At first blush, the fact that Microsoft failed to provide direct upgrade options from Windows XP to Windows 7 didn't excite much comment; after all, the company has rarely stretched back two versions in upgrade support, the implicit message being "Stick with the program, kid, or get left behind!" CIOs have accepted this as de rigeur even when they may have strategically made multi-version upgrades in the past, recognizing as they do from working in the technology field that it's simply not possible to support everything and you have to draw a line somewhere.

Lance Ulanoff's article in PC Magazine on the subject has got me thinking, though. Is this unconsidered, par move in fact another blunder in the seemingly neverending Vista mishap? Ulanoff thinks so and he may be on to something.

"Obviously, many businesses will wait anyway (I know of some firms still running Windows 2000 and earlier OSs), but this Microsoft strategy will certainly scare off many XP users who were considering an upgrade," Ulanoff says in his conclusion. In terms of consumer users, this hardly makes a difference, since so few upgrade existing installations anyway, rather waiting for a new PC purchase and taking what they get with it and dealing with the hassles of transferring at that point. I hadn't really considered that it mattered much to business users, either; the trend in corporate IT has been to systematize and centrally manage desktops, and like as not, a new operating system deployment in the corporate environment avoids the upgrade process anyway by using images and image management tools to roll out such a significant new version.

But many SMB customers, a significant segment of the market, are between those two worlds. They prefer standardized operating systems, but may not have achieved the technical sophistication to centrally manage them. For this market, the lack of upgrade path from XP must seem a slap in the face after the Vista debacle... and combined with the reality they have learned that upgrades are optional, it may be another factor that continues to keep them from switching. And the longer that process continues, the more Microsoft stands to lose, and the heavily featured desktop operating systems that Windows epitomizes continue to become less and less important.