Last week, Microsoft did a press tour to talk up Windows Vista for businesses. Microsoft must walk a fine line between making Vista appealing to consumers without having businesses wonder if it's mostly a consumer release. Windows XP suffered from that perception and some organizations delayed upgrades for that reason.

One of the claims that Microsoft made to reporters was that Windows Vista will enable companies to manage their users better and reap the savings of better manageability in addition to any inherent savings Windows Vista provides. Although Microsoft's total cost of ownership (TCO) reduction claim (reducing IT operation costs from $542 to $202, or 63%) is probably aggressive to begin with (we estimate that moving from a typically managed to a locked and well-managed XP desktop can reduce IT operations costs from $576 to $377, or 34.5%; see "Use Best Practices to Reduce Desktop PC TCO, 2005-2006 Update), it's important to realize that well-managed environments don't just happen by themselves, and they don't just happen by throwing technology at them.

Managers should also realize that migration costs — the cost to get Windows Vista and the cost to get better managed — are not included in most TCO calculations. Migration costs, especially if the process is done manually and includes other technologies (such as a move to Office 2007), must be considered to ensure that any savings outweigh the cost.

Although many organizations use the deployment of a new operating system to reevaluate their management practices, and while Windows Vista and its user account control features may provide the technology needed to enable more companies to improve lockdown and remove administrator access from more users, lockdown is not done by technology alone. Companies that do not prepare their culture to enable lockdown will fail to realize the benefits they expect.