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That's the story according to Laura DiDio, principal with ITIC. Vista business adoption is small and not likely to get much bigger before Microsoft releases Windows 7. According to a recent IT survey she conducted in conjunction with Sunbelt Software, only 10 percent of businesses have migrated to Windows Vista. That data is consistent with Gartner findings released a couple months ago.

"Some 46 percent of the survey respondents said their businesses will skip Vista and migrate directly from Windows XP to the next generation Windows," Laura explained in an e-mail exchange today. She added:

This is attributable to two things:

* Windows XP has a lot of life left in it and is perfectly fine for most businesses.

* Without a specific or compelling business reason to migrate in this bearish economy the majority of corporations will opt to conserve their already constrained IT capital expenditure monies.

But those constraints aren't everywhere or affecting every project. Eighty-eight percent of businesses run Windows XP, which is viewed as good enough for right now. Based on Laura's findings, money saved on Vista now could be spent as early as when Windows 7 becomes available.

So far, only 27 percent of businesses plan to reduce technology spending next year, while 32 percent will keep the same budgets as 2008. Another 16 percent of businesses plan to increase budgets, making those spending the same or more 48 percent of businesses. One quarter of respondents are either unsure of budgets or haven't yet made a decision.

Impact of decreasing budgets:

* Among businesses planning budget cuts, 32 percent said spending would decline by 5 percent to 15 percent.

* 35 percent of respondents have abandoned planned upgrades of software, hardware or network infrastructure.

* Top major abandoned projects are server hardware (21 percent), network infrastructure (19 percent) or storage (15 percent).

That last finding is disconcerting, because of the potential impact on Microsoft server software, which has been viewed as a growth area even as desktop PC sales and operating system upgrades retract.

Laura emphasized that the survey was "independent," polling "700 C-level executives and IT managers." She emphasized: "ITIC and Sunbelt conducted two dozen first person customer interviews to validate the survey responses. ITIC and Sunbelt received no vendor sponsorship for this research and none of the survey respondents received any remuneration for their participation."