Over the next 18 months, Microsoft will refresh nearly all its core technologies, warns consultant and Wikibon Analyst Scott Lowe in “A CIO view on Microsoft 2012-2013”. This former CIO warns that enterprise IT organizations need to plan a strategy to deal with the list of updates, and to help he provides a summary of the major new and upgraded features of each. He also rates each from the business (as opposed to consumer) standpoint on a 1 (don’t bother) to 5 (jump on this now) scale.

From the business standpoint, he rates Windows 8 as a 1. While the “touch first” technology makes sense for consumer smartphones and tablets, it is a poor choice for office laptops, he says. Also, while he likes the Metro interface the removal of the “start button” creates problems, including what he describes as “one of the most unintuitive processes I’ve ever come across” for shutting Windows 8 down. So unless your company is planning to distribute touch-screen systems across their operations, he recommends staying with Windows 7 and leaving Windows 8 to consumers.

On the other extreme, he gives Windows Server 2012 a 5. He says it comes with several major, well designed upgrades, including a vastly improved version of Hyper-V that is competitive with VMware in features, a new version of RemoteFX that no longer requires a physical graphic processing unit (although it still supports one in case you have one lying around), Dynamic Access Control, and a simplified version of DirectAccess.

Office 2013 gets a lukewarm 3. The most important upgrades are to Excel, he says, suggesting that companies that make heavy use of Excel, such as accountancies, might rate it higher. Most companies, however, can safely delay upgrading.

System Center 2012 also gets a 3, but in this case the less enthusiastic rating is partly because the bundling of a large group of formerly separate products is a two-edged sword. For those companies that use many of these products for their cloud management already, or need them, this is a convenient, centralized toolbox. But for those that like to pick their tools from best-of-breed vendors, this will force the purchase of tools that they may not want or need. And it is a big chunk of code that SMBs running on smaller systems may find difficult to accomodate.

SharePoint 2013 gets a 3.5. Lowe calls this one of Microsoft’s “crown jewels”and one of the most versatile products on the market that can act as an information sharing hub, workflow-based business process enhancer, and application framework. However, he says the upgrades in the new version are evolutionary rather than revolutionary with the exception of SkyDrive Pro. He says that companies running SharePoint 2010 do not need to rush to upgrade.

Finally, whether you need to upgrade to Exchange 2013 depends on what version of Exchange you run presently. He rates it as a 2 for Exchange 2010 shops but a 4 for those on Exchange 2007 or earlier.

Like all Wikibon community research, this report is available in its entirety without charge on the Wikibon.org Web site. Interested parties are invited to register on the Wikibon site, which allows them to read, correct, and comment on this and other Wikibon research as well as receive Wikibon’s Peer Incite announcements and newsletters.