As reported in Forbes Magazine, businesses are staying away from Microsoft’s Windows 8 for their enterprise platforms. Citing what is known in the information technology industry as “upgrade fatigue,” both Forbes and PC World list complaints regarding Windows 8 ranging from requiring far too much user training to the new touch-centric user interface being too complicated and less than intuitive.

Howard Reisman, CEO of Heroix based in Braintree, Massachusetts, couldn't agree more.

“The people who are skeptical of Windows 8 have good reason to be skeptical,” Reisman said. He isn’t using it in his own company’s operation’s – and his company is one that provides support and technical advice to other businesses. As Reisman puts it, “The short of it is, I am not a fan at all.”

Like many other professionals in the information technology industry, Reisman believes Microsoft rushed Windows 8 to market because of pressure created by new product releases from Apple and Google.

“The (Windows 8) software isn’t mature and from what I have seen, I don’t think Microsoft has done a really good job of fixing any of its problems.”

Having said that, Reisman’s firm still remains a Certified Partner with Microsoft – and he still sings the praises of Windows 7. Most of his clients still use it.

“People tend to be slow adapters and many of them will stay with Windows 7 just as long as they can,” Reisman explained. “That will be years and years. I don’t see the commercial users going to Windows 8 at all. They will skip over it and wait for the release of its upgrade.” (Remember Vista?)

Reisman himself doesn't wait to depend on other software manufacturers to design what works for his business – and what works for his business, works for many others, too. Longitude is proprietary software for his company, Heroix. Running on many different platforms, it monitors networks, operating systems and applications for availability and performance. The software features a single dashboard displaying the real-time results from monitoring a system’s physical, virtual, network and application layers. Eminently intuitive, it can be installed, used and understood, even by non-technical staff, and is scalable to the enterprise. Longitude is a software gem that Reisman created after a massive success turned into an even bigger failure for his firm. It’s part of why he can identify with Microsoft’s current plight where Windows 8 is concerned.

“Our product before Longitude was my greatest failure that started out very successful at first,” Reisman said. “We got a pretty large user base initially and they were very vocal in asking us to keep adding functionality. We did this without consideration of the complexity it was creating and it eventually became too unwieldy.”

The experience made him re-think the software design process. In designing Longitude, Reisman established a set of design principles and stuck to them despite plenty of requests for adding various features. “The result,” he said, “was a cleaner, crisper product, much easier to maintain and one with higher, longer lasting user satisfaction.”

Its name reflects lessons Reisman learned well. He mentions how sailors in the 1700s frequently lost their way at sea due to a lack of longitudinal direction. Eventually an extremely accurate clock was created that gave sailors a reference point for computing longitude. The more accurate ability to identify location made all the difference in navigation.

“Knowing where you are at can be difficult and complex,” Reisman said speaking from personal knowledge. “The idea is that our product helps businesses identify exactly where their critical computer systems are at and lets them know how to get them to the performance level needed.”

Learn more about Heroix and its product Longitude online at www.heroix.com