What Microsoft's Windows Vista has lacked in rates of universal corporate adoption to date, the operating system has certainly made up for in widespread notoriety and critical press coverage.

Everyone, it seems, has an opinion about Vista or a scheme to avoid migrating from the much-loved XP: "Windows Is Broken." "Should Microsoft Throw Away Vista?" "Microsoft's Vista Plan: Throw More Lipstick on the Pig." "Save Windows XP!"

Despite the persistent bark of anti-Vista sentiment from unenthusiastic enterprises and the Microsoft-hater faction, the Microsoft and Vista caravan has driven on (and the June 30th deadline to stop selling XP licenses remains unchanged.) In late April Microsoft announced that it had sold more than 100 million Windows Vista licenses since its consumer debut in January 2007.

So, clearly, someone has upgraded to Vista. (Of course, consumers buying new PCs have had less choice in the matter than enterprises.)

A recent report from Forrester Research, "Lessons Learned From Early Adopters Of Windows Vista," offers four tactics and strategies for those losing sleep over their upcoming Vista migrations.

"Although most of these challenges—namely hardware and software compatibility—aren't new with Windows Vista," writes Forrester analyst Benjamin Gray, "many of the workarounds companies deployed are."

Four Keys to Vista Migration Success

Hundreds of businesses worldwide have successfully deployed Windows Vista, and thousands more are preparing to do the same, Gray notes in the report. "But because adoption has been cautious, it's been a challenge for companies to learn from early adopters." Research from November 2007 showed that slightly more than half of the enterprises Forrester surveyed don't yet have Windows Vista deployment plans, Gray notes. Others are simply taking a "wait-and-see approach."

Even with such a large base of reluctant enterprises, Forrester has been able to gather lessons from those that have migrated. "Most of the challenges that companies experienced were compatibility issues," Gray writes. "But with support from Microsoft, client management solutions, third-party software vendors and client virtualization vendors, companies are discovering workarounds to the most common migration challenges."

From conversations with IT department staffers whose companies have successfully deployed Vista, Forrester offers these four best practices.

1. Tie the OS upgrade to your company's natural PC refresh cycle. Because of Vista's substantial hardware requirements, companies should "approach their OS migration and upcoming PC refresh cycle as one consolidated project," Gray writes. For example, companies should upgrade existing PCs to 2GB of memory for use with Vista, but limit the upgrades to PCs that are less than 18 months old.