Vistais stability and compatibility with current business software were the overwhelming concern of IT professionals surveyed recently. Mac OS X was cited as the leading alternative in the report, according to Computerworld UK on Monday.

A survey of 961 IT professionals, predominantly in the U.S., was conducted by King Research on behalf of systems management vendor Kace. "The concerns about Vista specified by participants were overwhelmingly related to stability. Stability in general was frequently cited, as well as compatibility with the business software that would need to run on Vista," said Diane Hagglund of King Research. "Cost was also cited as a concern by some respondents." Ninety percent said they have concerns about the switch and 53 percent said they have no plans for Vista at all.

The report, called "Windows Vista Adoption and Alternatives" said that 9 percent have considered a non-Windows OS and 25 percent [are] expecting to switch in the next year.

Leading the pack of potential alternatives is Mac OS X with 28 percent, followed by about 25 percent for Red Hat Linux, 18 percent for SUSE and Ubuntu and 9 percent for other Linux systems.

Respondents cited the management of multiple operating systems and the need to learn new management tools as barriers to a second OS adoption. Sixty percent of the respondents manage their Windows systems with tools that donit exist on non-Windows platforms.

The report echoed similar results from a Forrester report from last week, however, that report focused on the more traditional issues that slow down the adoption of a new OS in the enterprise. King Research is located in Jackson, Calif.