While there has been a lot of excitement surrounding Windows 7 from the consumer side of things it looks like it might not be as attractive on the enterprise side of things.  Paul Thurrott (WinSuperSite) recently did an interview with Microsoft Subnet and detailed out some of Windows 7′s downfalls for enterprises.

Q: In your opinion, will enterprise IT folks who are holding onto XP for their users want to adopt Windows 7 fairly quickly? Why/why not?

A: I wouldn’t say that Windows 7 will drive them to upgrade. There are natural upgrade rhythms and Windows 7 should benefit from that. But there are some things about it — that it runs well on lower-end hardware — that make it appealing to businesses. I don’t see people doing a rip-and-replace of existing hardware for it, and Windows 7 isn’t magic. It’s not going to make obsolete, five-year old hardware work. But it does run on new lower-end systems and does so effectively, allowing businesses to buy lower-end hardware than they might not have otherwise considered. Vista, as we all know, unfortunately didn’t do that — hardware minimums were high.

Q: What does Microsoft need to fix in Windows 7 to make it more appealing for the enterprise than Vista ever was?

A: In all fairness Microsoft for years was criticized for not pushing the envelope and when they did –- with Vista — they got a lot of push back. Windows XP will go down in history as the Windows version that lasted for the longest possible time. But Windows 7 runs great, as I mentioned, even on low-end hardware.

If there’s one big negative to Windows 7, it’s that there isn’t much of an enterprise story. Microsoft is pushing the idea that Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 are “better together” and also pushing the notion that, for the first that time since Windows Server 2000, Microsoft has co-developed the server and client code together. Now, WS2000 offered a whole lot of new, compelling features — Active Directory, Group Policy, all kinds of new important technologies for the day. Its technologies are now mainstream –- and if we look at Windows Server 2008 through the same lens, we see it is not as huge a jump in such ways at all.

Of the new technologies it does offer, one disappointment I have is that sometimes both server and client have to be on the newest version to use them and that it seems almost arbitrary, which features require Windows 7 … I can’t even say that many of them are Tier A features.

Also, Microsoft did itself a disfavor with its naming scheme. Windows 7 is really Windows 6.1, an incremental upgrade to Vista. But if you follow Microsoft’s naming scheme, an R2 release shouldn’t be that big a deal. But this version of R2 is a bigger update than would be apparent from its name.

I do agree with Paul Thurrott that the way that Microsoft is tying Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 together is a bad idea but I don’t think he understands the biggest component of getting companies to upgrade their operating systems, Peer Pressure.

When large companies are contemplating a big move such as switching from Windows XP to Windows Vista they ask other companies what they are planning to do.  If those companies are vocal and state they won’t be upgrading it is very likely that their decision will be adopted by them as well.  Peer pressure can be a very powerfull thing especially for large corporations.

Make sure you check out the rest of the interview at Network World