IT pros: We hate Microsoft

If we're to believe a study about the performance ratings IT pros give to vendors, Microsoft is in big trouble. The study just out from VendorRate gives Microsoft products across-the-board dreadful ratings for customer satisfaction, integrity, reliability, and more.

VendorRate conducted an online survey of IT pros of 347 hardware, software, telecom and service vendors during the second quarter of 2009, and only reported results for those vendors that received eight or more ratings. Microsoft's ratings for that quarter, in the words of Rick Schaefer, CEO of VendorRate, "simply fell off a cliff in this quarter."

The site asked for IT pros to rate vendors in 10 categories, including integrity, timeliness, communications, customer service, expertise, effectiveness, and whether they would recommend the vendor to others. It then added all the categories for each vendor to come up with a total.

For Microsoft, the ratings were universally dismal.Three different Microsoft businesses were given separate ratings, including operating systems, applications, and server/infrastructure.

Here's a brief summary of the findings, taken from the VendorRate summary:

IT pros rating vendors on VendorRate in April, May and June hammered Microsoft across the board with poor customer satisfaction scores for the company’s server and infrastructure software (55 out of 100, down nearly 17 percent), operating systems (67, down 9.5 percent) and applications (64, off nearly 18 percent).

Verizon was at the bottom of the barrel, with a 61 rating, followed by Sprint Nextel with 64, and Microsoft applications with 64. Microsoft operating systems was tied with AT&T Wireless for next worse with a 67. That means Microsoft took two of the bottom five spots. IBM Informix, meanwhile, took the top spot for vendors with a 96.

It's hard to know what to make of the survey, because there was no event or series of events that could have caused such a drastic plunge in a single quarter. But whatever the reason, Microsoft clearly has a lot riding on Windows 7, because if that operating system is a hit, you can expect all these numbers to rise.  (story Link)