This seems to be the TL;DR of many reviews. If this becomes 'common wisdom', which looks likely, then I think MS are going to lose a lot of people on the upgrade train as this guy suggests.
Lose them to who? Is Linux or a Mac really a viable upgrade path for most corporations? How much Windows expertise has been built up over the years/decades? How many interoperating windows products are they already running? Legacy software? All of these are major barriers to switching.
And this is the key to Microsoft's strategy with Windows 8. Roll out their next generation paradigm while piggy-backing on the momentum of their current generation software and infrastructure. If they had waited too long to transition, it would have been a situation of "well if I have to relearn everything anyways...". Forcing this paradigm on their desktop and server customers now was key to keeping the majority of their userbase in the transition.
Themselves. On the desktop, there may not be a compelling reason to upgrade to Windows 8...with the exception of IE10. As a former enterprise IT manager, I would seriously consider staying with Windows 7 and switching my users wholesale to Chrome or Firefox...despite the lack of GPO options with either of those.
And I'm guessing that Microsoft has enough smart business people to get a pretty good estimate of how many enterprise customers will stick with the recently released Windows 7. It was going to be hard to make a product that gave IT departments a compelling reason to upgrade from 7 which makes Windows 8 a great time to test the water for things like mobile. Enterprise isn't jumping ship on Microsoft and they're going to use that stronghold to attempt to gain new markets in an "off-release".
Thanks for the link. I hadn't investigated for several years and it's nice to know they've jumped on the GPO bandwagon. All the more reason to get your enterprise off IE.
Windows 8 is designed for a touchscreen.
This seems to be the TL;DR of many reviews. If this becomes 'common wisdom', which looks likely, then I think MS are going to lose a lot of people on the upgrade train as this guy suggests.