Windows 8, Business ready?

Thanks to an aggressive marketing campaign, no one can claim not to have seen the new "Metro Style" UI shared by both Windows 8 and Windows Phone.
This is the biggest change in a desktop operating system user interface since Windows 95.

Windows 8 - Dell XPS Duo



On the Surface tablet and other multi-touch devices it clearly works and works well with large bright live tiles which launch applications primarily geared toward social media.
I've ran the developer preview on a Zoostorm SL8 since the day of it's release, followed by Windows 8 Pro prior to Surface RT becoming available and I can say that as a web browser and a social application platform it's better than anything else out there. It's a big version of the Windows phone as the iPad is to the iPhone. Microsoft have completely reinvented what it is to be Windows, it offers a great deal more than the i-range with the freshest, cleanest, most modern looking interface to grace the industry to date. And if we were only reviewing its functionality for personal use then that would be it, case closed. Windows 8 and Windows Phone will be a success.

But as Microsoft have consolidated on a single OS for both business and pleasure then it has to work equally on both counts and I'm not sure it does. When showcasing Windows 8 to technicians and admins on desktop machines, their first reaction is to click the desktop icon and drop to that familiar interface. This only delays the somewhat painful transition from Windows 7 to 8. Microsoft have included the desktop to run legacy applications only. Anything written for Windows 8 will run within the new interface only. As we move forward legacy apps will be left behind along with the desktop.

Windows 8 has to work within industry for casual business users as well as serious number crunching apps, currently Microsoft have close to 90% of the desktop market and Windows 7 has sold more than any other Microsoft Operating System with over a billion sales.
At first it seems Microsoft have alienated their dedicated business users forcing them to change the way they work just because they wanted to try something new. But Microsoft have undertaken more research and are more aware of the shifting trends in the market place than anyone. When evaluating Windows 8 on a mouse driven desktop or laptop system designed for XP or Windows 7 it doesn't work. I've had feedback from countess IT managers and senior engineers toting that their organisation will not be adopting it. But this is a very short sighted view and we hear the same cries every time Microsoft change Windows. There are two reasons for this, firstly the IT support teams have to learn a new skill set just as they are getting comfortable with supporting the previous Windows, and secondly all of the end users supported by such teams lodge protests about the change as it prevents them from being as productive. Why change something if it works already?

To balance the argument we need to look at motivation for Microsoft to risk losing some of its lucrative business desktop market. New IT systems and services should only be adopted if they either need replacing due to reaching end of life and are no longer compatible or because they can generate a positive ROI. With Windows 8 it is a bit of both.
To understand the situation we have to realise what Microsoft already know, that desktop and mobile computing platforms we use today are not the ones we will be using tomorrow.
Our computing is becoming more ubiquitous, more portable, easier to interact with.
The mouse and the keyboard are not HCI tools we will be using forever. The next generation of desktop and mobile computing devices will be primarily touch and voice driven with mouse and keyboard secondary input systems and not required for many tasks.

As an example lets look at using a Windows 8 desktop computer with a touch monitor, installed with Microsoft Lync. I wish to call a colleague on his office extension.
I launch Lync by touching the metro icon. It logs me in with SSO, I scroll down my contact list using touch, tap the photo of the colleague I wish to call and tap the phone icon.
I'm in a VoIP call to another worker using my Windows PC and I haven't yet had to use a mouse.

In addition to the new hardware platforms favouring portability, voice and touch, the applications themselves are changing. They leverage features of Presence, social media, activity feeds and connectedness. The office of the future is expected to be a very different place depending upon many services which were once thought of as counter productive, such as messaging, with social networking tools at it's heart.

Windows 8 will help consolidate the diverse deployment technologies currently required and bring better integration with cloud services and while at first it will only be welcomed on tablet devices, eventually Windows 8-like systems will be the destination of all computing devices.