A new survey by Dell Kace indicates that 87 percent of responding IT professionals plan on deploying Windows 7. That's drawn from a pool of 993 respondents from North America, Europe and Asia Pacific (including IT hands-on professionals, IT managers and IT executives from a variety of small and large companies). The survey also produced some other findings:

46 percent of those surveyed said they planned to deploy Windows 7 before the release of Service Pack 1.

86 percent "reported concern about software compatibility when migrating to Windows 7."

25 percent expressed "concerns" about Windows 7 performance.

32 percent are "considering alternative operating systems to avoid Windows Vista or Windows 7," apparently down from 50 percent when this same group conducted a similar survey in April 2009.

According to Dell Kace (which bills itself as "the leading Systems Management Appliance" company), IT staff in 2009 exhibited reservations about upgrading their IT infrastructure to Windows 7, but many of those concerns have apparently given way before what the company terms "increased confidence in [the] performance, security and stability" of the operating system.

I'm sure everyone's experience of Windows 7 differs, but the positive data from this survey does seem to correspond with a more generalized uptake of Microsoft's flagship product; since October 2009, some 90 million copies of Windows 7 have reportedly been sold. However, Microsoft executives have repeatedly emphasized that strong Windows 7 sales have been coming primarily from the consumer segment, while enterprise spending has been lagging; if studies like the Dell Kace one are any indication, though, business adoption could begin to pick up more substantially, in line with increased IT budgets and (maybe) a slow revival of the economy.

I think the bottom line here is, we can say once and for all that Windows 7 is no Vista.