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Microsoft is predicting that Windows Vista will be adopted by companies at twice the speed as its predecessor, Windows XP.

Twelve months after the release of Vista, Microsoft expects that usage share of the oft-delayed operating system in businesses will be double that of XP a year after it shipped, said Brad Goldberg, general manager for Windows product management at the software maker.

“Vista is built for businesses,” Goldberg said. “We’re giving businesses the tools they need to get out of the gate faster with Vista…Our goal is to have twice as fast deployment of Vista than for any other operating system.”

Microsoft declined to give its own figures on Windows XP’s usage percentages, and instead referred to research by IDC. According to the analyst company, XP was installed on about 10 percent of enterprise PCs after a year. That would put the goal for Vista at 20 percent.

“For them to do 20 percent in the first 12 months of availability is almost impossible,” said Al Gillen, an analyst at IDC. “They have done all the right things, but adoption is going to be driven by corporate adoption and deployment cycles, more so than by whether Microsoft has greased the skids to make the product glide in faster.”

Full article: CNET News.com