If you haven’t already guessed what I’m talking about by the title of this article, I’ll give you another clue; so far business users are very unsure about the new Metro UI in Windows 8.  Got it yet?  Yup, I’m talking about Windows deployment but more than that, I also want to look at what the other options for business might be.

Microsoft have made a big deal in recent years out of their business customers wanting a clear, three-year product cycle.  This followed the overruns that held up Windows Vista for two years past its intended launch.  But does business really want a three year product cycle.  After all we constantly hear businesses complaining about the cost and time taken in deploying a new operating system and the associated costs in buying new hardware.

Almost every business on the planet ran Windows XP for many years with many more migrating to Windows 7 now.  Windows Vista wasn’t popular in the business space and almost every business worldwide avoided it.  It’s also possible that business users will avoid Windows 8 too, most probably if it happens because of the new learning curve associated with the new UI.  This might not seem steep, but businesses always try to avoid the costs involved in retraining staff (which is why the coffee machine usually has lots of post it notes all over it instead!)

It’s quite likely that businesses will avoid Windows 8 for these reasons and the fact that many businesses are still to deploy Windows 7.  They’re hardly likely to want to go through it all again two years from now when it can take two years to deploy a new operating system across a large company to begin with.

But… What if businesses really dislike Windows 8 and it wants to make them look at alternatives?  This scenario is highly unlikely but worth looking at anyway.  OS X is out, firstly because of the prohibitively high costs associated with needing all new desktop hardware, but also because of the recent and ongoing storm about Apple tablet’ifying the OS and deserting IT Pros (sound familiar?).  This leaves just two alternatives, GNU/Linux and ReactOS.  Now if you’ve not heard of ReactOS before I wouldn’t be too surprised.

It’s a new Windows clone being developed in Russia (a country still without copyright laws) that’s reminiscent of Windows 2000; which many people including myself still have a soft spot for, but that is apparently capable of running all current Windows software and hardware.

Now the last Windows clone, Lindows, later rebranded Linspire ended up in protracted legal battles with Microsoft, which won’t come as any surprise.  Any attempt to distribute ReactOS outside of the Russian Federation will no doubt meet the same fate.  However, smaller business could find it attractive.

similarly, larger businesses could be attracted be some of the support deals offered with larger Linux distributions.  Linux, which is now very easy to use thanks to distributions such as Ubuntu, now face less of a learning curve since people are becoming accustomed to using a variety of operating systems, most notable Google’s Android which acts in a very desktop way.

Microsoft’s fight-back will begin with the next version of Windows Server, which as already announced will have a huge plethora of new features to tempt businesses to upgrade.  Windows in the server space is the company’s best way to keep the desktop licences too.

Other products such as Office 365 though will run effectively with any desktop or even mobile operating system.  It’s entirely possible then that Windows 7 could be the last desktop version of the operating system to be adopted by businesses en-masse.  By 2015 and the launch of Windows 9, Microsoft could have an almighty fight on its hands.