Almost a year ago, Microsoft officially launched its latest operating systems (OS); Windows 7. This operating system was launched with the main aim of solving the problems Microsoft's users encountered with Vista. The Egyptian Gazette caught up with Mohamed Salah, the Windows Marketing Manager in Microsoft Egypt, for a detailed interview about the company's latest OS. What momentum do you see with Windows 7 thus far? Honeslty speaking, we are excited that people are responding so positively to Windows 7. Our customers have made it the fastest selling operating system in history. Windows 7 has sold about 240 million licences worldwide so far! In addition, Windows 7 is already the new industry standard with 88 per cent of business customers already underway with their Windows 7 migrations, according to IDC. How much market share has the latest OS acquired so far? Net Applications has estimated that as of September 2010, Windows 7 has a 17 per cent global OS market share, and Windows overall accounts for 91 per cent of the global OS market share. How long did it take prior Windows OS to attain similar market shares? In the two quarters after their respective releases, Windows 7 grabbed 10 per cent, while Windows Vista only managed to grab less than five per cent of the OS market share. While we are confident that Windows 7 continues to resonate with customers, we are not able to predict that rate of adoption with that level of granularity. When will Windows 7 Service Pack 1 be released and what would it include? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 will be released within the first half of 2011. However, customers should not feel like they need to wait for SP1 before upgrading to Windows 7. Windows 7 SP1 will include all updates previously available to Windows 7 users through Windows Update, so there is no reason to wait or delay their use of Windows 7. Were you surprised to find that ,regardless of the economic current this past year Windows 7 has been such a success in the enterprise sector? As a matter of fact, we are still hearing from customers every day about the economic advantages of deploying Windows 7. There are several key reasons for this, including the many Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) benefits Windows 7 delivers. For example, the applied technologies give our IT customers the tools to get more done with less, by simplifying the processes of managing and maintaining their networks and the ability to support more flexible virtualised environments without the additional draw on IT resources. Windows 7 also provides power savings across key scenarios to help reduce the cost of power across the enterprise. Microsoft has designed Windows 7 to reduce power consumption by focusing on core infrastructure in areas such as enhanced processor power management. Microsoft has also improved device power management in areas such as display dimming and supporting low power modes for other devices in the system. How about partners, what sort of revenue growth do they see as a result of Windows 7? We are seeing tremendous market momentum for Windows 7, which is creating new possibilities for our ecosystem. Similar to the success we have seen with Windows 7 sales, we have seen the ecosystem rally around the operating system; partners are helping our customers migrate to Windows 7, upgrade their PC hardware and install the latest versions of the software they've relied on in previous versions of Windows.
