Windows Vista - friend or foe?
Agnitum starts a Russian version of its English-language corporate blog . In the near future, the most “hot” posts from the beginning of the year will be translated and published.
It seems that it is impossible to open a magazine or newspaper and not read about Microsoft Vista there. And, indeed, the title (vista - “string”, Eng.) Turned out to be prophetic - we see a whole string of articles on Vista. As a security developer focused on Microsoft technology, in previous posts we [Agnitum] have publicly expressed our opinion about the built-in firewall and kernel patch protection issues related to Vista. This time we decided to pay attention to the business interests of Microsoft and Agnitum - where they differ, and where they overlap.
Welcoming the undeniable bravery of Microsoft’s marketing department, we decided to design them in the form of 5P - “Five Pi” (anyone who has ever studied marketing knows that the core of marketing theory is based around a concept called 4P - “Four Pi” is true, our [according to Agnitum] five are slightly different from the original).
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P1. Price (Price)
A full personal user license for Vista costs $ 199. If you upgrade to Vista from a previous version, the price drops to $ 100. Naturally, the cost of the operating system is just the beginning. Most users will also need to upgrade their computers (or even buy a new PC). During a short period (ended in March), some users could get so-called iron suppliers from their suppliers. "Express upgrade", but now it is impossible. Of course, like Microsoft, Agnitum wants to keep its customers (and make them happy), which is why we provide a continuous subscription to updates. Unlike Microsoft, we do not force our users to spend more than the declared value.
P2. Advertising (Pitch)
How do you determine that it is time to move away from the proven Windows XP and upgrade to Vista? Currently, when the number of Vista-compatible products on the market is small - at least, Vista-compatible products that would be thoroughly tested - you are unlikely to be tempted by new programs that exist only for this platform. However, as noted earlier, the media is constantly writing about Vista, and in the minds of users there is a growing sense that this is a technology that everyone should have and not just be nice to have. There are also many other messages through other channels designed to influence your software purchase plans. Without a doubt, the Microsoft marketing machine is a force to be reckoned with. Very few software companies (and not Agnitum among them) can afford to spend a large amount of money to maintain or increase market share.
P3. Pressure
Of course, as soon as Vista came out, software developers were showered with questions about when their products would become compatible with Vista. This pressure is especially felt by us, the developers of security tools, since Vista claims to be the safest version of Windows. Which, in turn, means that it’s more difficult than ever for third-party developers to guarantee full compatibility of their products with Vista in the long run. That is why we spend so much time testing and debugging our Vista-compatible products — we don’t want to release something that will work now, but will stop working with the appearance of fixes for Vista security holes (and, as we know, they will be — and much earlier release of the first update package).
P4. Protection
Many third-party resources and services that monitor vulnerabilities, such as Secunia reports , have already announced many unsolved vulnerabilities in Vista and problems with the built-in firewall and other “protection” tools. Although Vista is much less vulnerable than XP, it is important to remember that operating systems are designed to perform many different tasks, while companies like Agnitum produce products designed only for one thing - protecting a Windows-based computer. When it comes to system security, we prefer to be "best in class" rather than "better than average", like most.
P5. Porting
We have a little tricks with this term, since porting is usually used to mean transferring code between operating systems, and we want to talk about switching users from one OS to another. But we could not come up with a synonym for such a migration, starting with the English letter "pi" ("p") ...
As Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, put it: “I'm really excited about the enthusiasm around Vista. But everyone should understand that some of the revenue forecasts for Windows Vista in fiscal 2008 that I saw are too bold. ” A third-party opinion seems to support this view.
Here are a couple of excerpts from relevant surveys:
“According to Amplitude Research, Boca Raton, Florida, a survey commissioned by security company VanDyke Software, Albuquerque, New Mexico, more than half of those surveyed said that their plans did not move to Vista when it was released, despite all the security enhancements Microsoft promised to make in the operating system. ” ( SearchCIO.com )
The Gartner study states that “by the end of 2007, Vista will be installed on less than 10 percent of computers, this number will increase to 29.3 percent in 2008, 50 percent in 2009, and 67.7 percent by the end of 2010”.
We also conducted our own research on the intentions of switching among our users and published them in the latest issue of Agnitum News - they are not very different from others.
And what does all this tell us? All this says that:
Microsoft are very effective marketers
Users welcome the concept of a safer operating system, but many are waiting for confirmation in order to spend money on the necessary new hardware or upgrade the old one.
Do not rush to create Vista-compatible software versions, as users choose applications they want to use before they choose the platform on which they want to run these applications.
Taking this into account, we will release Outpost Firewall Pro and Outpost Security Suite Pro for Vista later this year, after they are fully tested and debugged both in our lab and by the team of our dedicated beta testers. (To join the beta testers team, click here ).
Sincerely yours, Agnitum Ltd. team
It seems that it is impossible to open a magazine or newspaper and not read about Microsoft Vista there. And, indeed, the title (vista - “string”, Eng.) Turned out to be prophetic - we see a whole string of articles on Vista. As a security developer focused on Microsoft technology, in previous posts we [Agnitum] have publicly expressed our opinion about the built-in firewall and kernel patch protection issues related to Vista. This time we decided to pay attention to the business interests of Microsoft and Agnitum - where they differ, and where they overlap.
Welcoming the undeniable bravery of Microsoft’s marketing department, we decided to design them in the form of 5P - “Five Pi” (anyone who has ever studied marketing knows that the core of marketing theory is based around a concept called 4P - “Four Pi” is true, our [according to Agnitum] five are slightly different from the original).
')
P1. Price (Price)
A full personal user license for Vista costs $ 199. If you upgrade to Vista from a previous version, the price drops to $ 100. Naturally, the cost of the operating system is just the beginning. Most users will also need to upgrade their computers (or even buy a new PC). During a short period (ended in March), some users could get so-called iron suppliers from their suppliers. "Express upgrade", but now it is impossible. Of course, like Microsoft, Agnitum wants to keep its customers (and make them happy), which is why we provide a continuous subscription to updates. Unlike Microsoft, we do not force our users to spend more than the declared value.
P2. Advertising (Pitch)
How do you determine that it is time to move away from the proven Windows XP and upgrade to Vista? Currently, when the number of Vista-compatible products on the market is small - at least, Vista-compatible products that would be thoroughly tested - you are unlikely to be tempted by new programs that exist only for this platform. However, as noted earlier, the media is constantly writing about Vista, and in the minds of users there is a growing sense that this is a technology that everyone should have and not just be nice to have. There are also many other messages through other channels designed to influence your software purchase plans. Without a doubt, the Microsoft marketing machine is a force to be reckoned with. Very few software companies (and not Agnitum among them) can afford to spend a large amount of money to maintain or increase market share.
P3. Pressure
Of course, as soon as Vista came out, software developers were showered with questions about when their products would become compatible with Vista. This pressure is especially felt by us, the developers of security tools, since Vista claims to be the safest version of Windows. Which, in turn, means that it’s more difficult than ever for third-party developers to guarantee full compatibility of their products with Vista in the long run. That is why we spend so much time testing and debugging our Vista-compatible products — we don’t want to release something that will work now, but will stop working with the appearance of fixes for Vista security holes (and, as we know, they will be — and much earlier release of the first update package).
P4. Protection
Many third-party resources and services that monitor vulnerabilities, such as Secunia reports , have already announced many unsolved vulnerabilities in Vista and problems with the built-in firewall and other “protection” tools. Although Vista is much less vulnerable than XP, it is important to remember that operating systems are designed to perform many different tasks, while companies like Agnitum produce products designed only for one thing - protecting a Windows-based computer. When it comes to system security, we prefer to be "best in class" rather than "better than average", like most.
P5. Porting
We have a little tricks with this term, since porting is usually used to mean transferring code between operating systems, and we want to talk about switching users from one OS to another. But we could not come up with a synonym for such a migration, starting with the English letter "pi" ("p") ...
As Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, put it: “I'm really excited about the enthusiasm around Vista. But everyone should understand that some of the revenue forecasts for Windows Vista in fiscal 2008 that I saw are too bold. ” A third-party opinion seems to support this view.
Here are a couple of excerpts from relevant surveys:
“According to Amplitude Research, Boca Raton, Florida, a survey commissioned by security company VanDyke Software, Albuquerque, New Mexico, more than half of those surveyed said that their plans did not move to Vista when it was released, despite all the security enhancements Microsoft promised to make in the operating system. ” ( SearchCIO.com )
The Gartner study states that “by the end of 2007, Vista will be installed on less than 10 percent of computers, this number will increase to 29.3 percent in 2008, 50 percent in 2009, and 67.7 percent by the end of 2010”.
We also conducted our own research on the intentions of switching among our users and published them in the latest issue of Agnitum News - they are not very different from others.
And what does all this tell us? All this says that:
Microsoft are very effective marketers
Users welcome the concept of a safer operating system, but many are waiting for confirmation in order to spend money on the necessary new hardware or upgrade the old one.
Do not rush to create Vista-compatible software versions, as users choose applications they want to use before they choose the platform on which they want to run these applications.
Taking this into account, we will release Outpost Firewall Pro and Outpost Security Suite Pro for Vista later this year, after they are fully tested and debugged both in our lab and by the team of our dedicated beta testers. (To join the beta testers team, click here ).
Sincerely yours, Agnitum Ltd. team
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/8850/
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