Yes, I’m going to Las Vegas in the morning but thats not what this post is about.
You see today we announced our mega-plan to launch Microsoft Vista and Office 2007. Having gone through three product release cycles of customers pondering “We’ll wait till they fix it in SP1” because they heard some imbecil on the radio say it wasn’t ready, we decided to do something about it.*
So starting the end of the month we’ll be shipping 1,000 systems running RC’s of Vista and Office to our managed clients offices. This way we get to show them what the next wave is all about, get to test the OS with their current LOBs, get to hook that one technology decision maker without a single signature, permission or question. Box just comes there with a return label where in 4–6 months we sweep it back and turn it into an ExchangeDefender node. Entire effort gets written off as a marketing expenditure before the holidays and we rack up Vista deployments on actual business benefits and values instead of marketing fluff.
* Why are people inclined to take advice from radio show pundits? Seriously, think about it -if they had half a brain they would be making more than $18,000 a year. Second, what does a DJ know about software development? Software testing? Software release quality? I’m sorry, I’ve listened to their radio shows, saw them on TechTV, heard them all over the place and even seen them sprawled over the Maxim centerfold – but I have yet to find someone that knows an ounce about software development and operating systems. They are as capable of judging Vista as I am qualified to judge a body building competition.
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