It has recently been revealed that Microsoft’s launch of their new Vista operating system in Paris used more fireworks than the French capital sent skywards on New Year’s Eve.

Impressive stuff. But whilst the fire-crackers are still smouldering on the banks of The Seine, the business world still appears to be waiting for the big bang. And with the total cost of ownership (TCO) figure for the new operating system still shrouded in confusion, it’s little surprise.

Earlier this week I spoke to William Band, a principal analyst at Forrester Research, to get his views on Microsoft’s new platform. Band has just published research examining enterprise CRM suites vendors, and found that Microsoft Dynamics CRM had “come out significantly stronger in terms of TCO than it had done in the past.”

So will this trend extend to Vista? “As far as Vista goes,” he says, “it seems like an improvement on the basic platform for Microsoft, but not so compelling that a lot of business people will upgrade to it immediately.”

Band did, however, acknowledge that a number of trends in the current market appeared to be working to Microsoft’s advantage. “From a technology procurement perspective the long-term trend suggests that mid-market and small market business communities are looking to reduce the different amounts of products in their organisations, and by standardising on a Microsoft platform it gives them some economies,” he said.

Despite Microsoft’s claim that the switch to Vista would see a reduction in TCO of 63%, research by Gartner has already suggested that companies looking to the new system for considerable savings would be left disappointed.

"Some TCO reductions will occur, but the biggest benefits will come from better management beyond the use of base Vista features," Michael Silver, Research VP at Gartner warned.

Silver was also quick to point out that Microsoft’s TCO reduction claim did not include migration costs - all of which leaves technology procurement professionals in something of a quandary.

The will we, won’t we, seems set to continue for some time yet. And any more fireworks are, for the time being at least, most definitely on hold.