At least one-third of enterprises are expected to begin deploying Windows Vista enterprise-wide by mid-2008, according to a Forrester Research report released this week that gauged the plans of PC decision makers in North America and Europe. These deployments will occur as more applications are certified and hardware refreshed to run Vista, Forrester said in a report entitled, “How Windows Vista will Shake Up the State of the Enterprise Operating System.” The report was authored primarily by Forrester analyst Benjamin Gray.According to the report, an additional 17 percent of enterprises surveyed plan to go to Vista in 2009 or beyond. But a larger percentage of European enterprises have no plans at any stage for Windows Vista deployments, when compared to North American enterprises. By the middle of next year, Forrester predicts Vista will be deployed on at least a quarter of PCs in North America and Europe. But Linux is expected to experience a growth on the desktop as well. Forrester receives a high volume of inquiries about Linux, indicating it is not going away anytime soon, the report said. “Expect Linux to experience growth over the next year as the distributors work hard to make it an enterprise-class offering,” the report said. But the percentage of enterprise PCs running either Mac OS or Linux now stands at just 1 percent each in North America. Thus far, Vista deployments have been limited to early adopters and testing environments but more aggressive rollouts are “inevitable,” Forrester said. Enterprises have continued standardizing on Windows XP but are cautious about rolling out a new OS; Vista does not break this pattern. Vista adoption was at just 2 percent in the first six to eight months of 2007. Meanwhile, Windows 2000 deployments dropped from 24 percent last year to 11 percent this year. Technology Industry