Vista to Create 50,000 Jobs in Europe

prostoalex writes "A Microsoft-sponsored study found that Vista will be a boon to European economy, as it 'will create more than 50,000 technology jobs in six large European countries and will lead to a flood of economic benefits for companies there,' News.com reports. Europe will see a total of 1.2 mln paychecks thanks to the new operating system: 'In the six countries studied, more than 150,000 IT companies will produce, sell or distribute products or services running on Windows Vista in 2007 and will employ 400,000 people, IDC said. Another 650,000 will be employed in the IT departments of businesses that rely on Vista.'"

catch22

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, so either way we look at this, either as said above businesses will not upgrade cos it will require these huge projected "extra" staff to accomodate, or if they can get by with existing staffing levels then there won't actually be any new jobs created by Vista... which is it?

Steve Gibson was right

[sphealey]

Back around 1992(?) Steve Gibson[1] wrote a column in which he predicted that by the year 2000 50% of the world's population would be employed supporting Windows for the other 50%. At this point I don't think he was far wrong.

sPh

[1] The old SpinRite guy who wrote a lot of good utilities in the DOS era.

=="Vista to cost European companies $3bn/year"

[gjuk]

50,000 jobs at, say, $60,000 each = $3bn. That's $3bn on top of license fees. That's $3bn just to do what you can do already. That's not good. Of course, moving to Linux is hardly cheap on support, but there's no license fee. Seems to me that this would be an ideal time to switch (not that big companies will). Still - it's hilarious that papers will carry this sort of PR puffery from Microsoft without question.

Re:This is great

[kfg]

Gives a whole new meaning to the "Broken Windows" fallacy of economics.

It's hardly new. 90% of the "economic boom" of the modern computer industry has been due to the Broken Windows Fallacy for the past decade or so. Mere money is being passed around like crazy, spent on little more than flushing wealth down the toilet, not to mention far too much of my irreplacable time, which I could better spend than fixing stuff that needn't be broken in the first place.

KFG

Re:EU

[jimicus]

I do assume, if the study is true, that European copies of Vista won't be including Windows Media Player.

You assume wrong.

The Media Player thing didn't result in Microsoft being forced to flog XP without Media Player in the EU. However, they are obliged to make a version without Media Player available. Nobody else, however is obliged to buy it.

OEMs, not much liking the idea of customers complaining that "Joe down the road just bought a new PC from (some other major OEM), and HE got media player!" for the sake of saving approximately zero, have stayed away in droves.

I supsect this is what the "15 different versions of Vista!" is probably about. Not just to fragment the market so people who are prepared to pay more do so, but also so that if they are taken to court again, they can stand up and say "Your honour, in the current version of our operating system thare are various options available with significant variations on what software is bundled. It's hardly our fault if every OEM on the planet is only selling one or two."

Re:Well, in that case

[tomhudson]

Another 650,000 will be employed in the IT departments of businesses that rely on Vista

No, no ... you've got it wrong. Its a feature, not a bug. Since every day will have to be "patch Tuesday", IT departments will be able to better integrate patching into their routine ... by hiring staff dedicated to it.

Actually, the nubmers from the article are total bullshit. Those 650,000 staff would be employed whether the business used Vista or not.

Re:This is great

[KlomDark]

What? You all gone communist? Are you saying you don't get paid anymore? Or am I not following your meaning?

Re:This is great

[ThePhilips]

You would also then note that M$ doesn't really play important role in OS business per se. M$ really doesn't understand where from its fortune came from.

M$ was earning money making early very different PCs behaving similarly. Or in other words, all those fancy "white boxes" have had all the same interface with the same DOS based OS. M$ power was in control of hardware companies - not in its OS. DOS & Windows was a tool of such control. (Thief's knife has little value unless put against someone's throat.) Billg executed that power perfectly to extort as much money as possible. (Well, as you might notice, M$Office cash cow is just pure bonus to the OS charade.)

In evolutionary current of events, thanks to mono-OS environment, PCs become standardized - all thanks to M$. When I open *any* system in my company I find pretty normal ATX system - w/o any proprietary cruft all the earlier white boxes are so infamous for.

Now M$ try to live up to its image of OS vendor - and it is failing. Just like everybody said before it would. 3rd party applications are the only reasons why people keep M$Windows around. OSs from M$ has little value now - since it has lost it's control over Intel and OEMs. We already have choice of OSs: Linux kernel and *BSD made entry to OS market damn cheap for anybody. But M$ seems yet to understand that the thief's knife itself has little value.

Of course they would roll the OS ball as long as they can - but they just not used to open competition. M$Server 2003 is fine solid product - but why would anyone pay for it all the moneys when they can get all the same from Linux for much less/no money?

Vista comes precisely in the time when it starts to make more and more sense for M$ to release its OS for free (free as in "free beer") as it was suggested by many journalists and observers some time ago. And start making money from its server products (Outlook, Exchange, SQL Server) and M$Office. But yet they used to disregard such the opportunities, since they still believe that they are OS company... :-(

Re:That's like saying...

[udippel]

Ooops, how can this be Insightful ?? And then even to an AC; I wonder ...

Here it looks like another fallacy:

If they were (supporting XP), and Vista needs another extra (and this is what MS says) 50.000 people, you can make a good prediction on the quality that Micosoft expects from her own product. Vista.
No good reason to talk about 50.000 jobs lost except Vista needs less support. Which still I fail to believe.

Re:That's a Fairy Tail with M$.

[Keith Russell]

I just had an epiphany.

Twitter is astroturfing.

Not intentionally, mind you. He wouldn't take Microsoft's filthy lucre, nor do I think he's trying reverse psychology to promote them. But every time he posts something like this, his good intentions just end up so much proverbial paving material.

Simple cause and effect should tell you that his worst-case-scenario form of "advocacy" is a blight on this forum. Initial posts are characterized by name calling, long-disproven talking points, unqualified assertions, and in some cases pride in ignorance of the subject matter. When held accountable for his actions, he turns to non sequiturs, more name calling, the occasional gross distortion of others' posting histories, but never with proof of his original assertions.

Is this the first impression you want to give a potential switcher?

The next time you see a Twitter post, and think "You know, he's got a point.", please look for other posts that make the same point fairly and respectfully. That's the kind of advocacy we need, not the hate-filled zealotry of the likes of Twitter.

Crack Business

[Blackbird_Highway]

Selling crack also generates thousands of "jobs", but that doesn't mean it's a good thing, does it.