Windows 7 S'pore sales Microsoft's fastest-ever

SINGAPORE--Windows 7 is the fastest-selling operating system (OS) in Microsoft's history here in Singapore, according to a company executive.

Haresh Khoobchandani, senior director, business and marketing organization, Microsoft Singapore said Windows 7 has in the first 30 days since its launch, already outsold more copies than predecessors Vista and XP reached in their first 90 days.

"This is indicative of the strong momentum and positive buzz that we're witnessing in the consumer space right now," he told ZDNet Asia during an interview.

This consumer momentum is creating a "spillover effect" in enterprise demand as well, he noted.

Last Thursday under its Microsoft New Efficiencies marketing drive, the software giant launched a bundled suite of products--Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010--aimed at enterprises. Local organizations such as Integrated Health Information Systems (IHIS), Trusted Source--the IT services arm of Temasek Holdings--and Starhub said during the launch event that they are in the process of testing Windows 7 for compatibility with their respective IT infrastructures and applications.

Khoobchandani said: "The standardization of platform as well as software...will lead to reduced costs, easier tool management and simplifying training process for businesses."

Ong Leong Seng, director, enterprise architecture development center of IHIS, which supports public health care clusters, said that healthcare institutions are looking to replace their Windows XP platform as the older OS comes to its end-of-life.

"At the enterprise level, we made a conscious decision to skip Vista. My team and I have been actively following and doing a fair bit of testing [since] Windows 7 was in its beta stage," said Ong. "Between April and May this year, we identified a set of 20 key clinical applications that most [healthcare professionals] use, to conduct compatibility tests with Windows 7."

Ong is also looking at some of Windows 7's newer features to help further develop some of the upcoming applications for healthcare institutions, such as "multi-touch capabilities" and exploring "gesture-based input" to improve the overall performance and efficiency of their services.

IHIS also hopes to achieve better power management and energy efficiency through the combination of Windows 7 and Windows Server on the backend for their COWs (Computer On Wheels) initiative, which provides mobile workstations to push on-demand diagnoses and test results to doctors and nurses.

"Windows 7 provides us with a better platform to develop and implement the next generation applications that are visually more appealing and can leverage on newer technologies such as multi-touch. It is faster, more stable and has a less confusing user interface, enabling [us] to take full advantage of the latest PC capabilities," Ong had said in a previous statement.

Ong revealed that IHIS relies largely on backend servers running Windows, with many of its applications built on the .NET framework. "We are looking at achieving better power efficiencies and new capabilities in virtualization," he said.

The IT head added that in future, IHIS will be looking at creating applications reducing the amount of paper used, involving efforts such as electronic clinical documentation, as well as a unified communications deployment for its staff to better interact with the current IT systems.