For many years now, eWEEK reporters, editors and Labs analysts have had a great resource: our Corporate Partner Advisory Board. The members of the board—IT managers, CIOs and CTOs—represent our readers.

Once a month, members of the group and I get together for a conference call. Sometimes we have a firm agenda, and sometimes we just talk about what's top of mind for the CPs at a given point in time.

We went the latter route on an early November afternoon. The gathered group was small, but that ended up making for great conversation.

As usual, Microsoft wound its way into the conversation. The week we talked happened to be the week that eWEEK.com published a bevy of stories on Vista and companies' slow uptake of the operating system.

Indeed, none of the CPs on the call said their organization had deployed Vista.

"Why not?" I asked.

"It's just not ready," replied Ed Benincasa, MIS Manager at FN Manufacturing.

"It's not ready, or you're not ready for it?" I countered.

"It's not ready," he repeated. Benincasa went on to say that many of his company's applications won't run on Vista, and that Vista wouldn't be deployed until they could.

Bob Rosen, CIO of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, said applications were an issue for his organization, as well, and that Vista deployment was at least six months away.

Benincasa also discussed Microsoft's Office, which may have been a bit of a sore spot since he and his IT colleagues have spent a fair amount of time evaluating Office alternatives in an effort to get off the Microsoft platform. But, mostly for file format reasons, FN is going the Office route in its quest to upgrade from Office 97.

But the company is not moving right to the latest version of Office, 2007. It has purchased Office 2007 licenses, but in a flavor that will let the company "bump back a generation" first. Essentially, FN Manufacturing will go from Office 97 to Office 2003 to Office 2007.

Why, you ask? I did, too.

Benincasa said the reason was because 97 to 2007 was just too big a jump. In fact, the company is developing a "delta" training program, documenting how functions have changed from version to version so users can eventually be moved to 2007.

Moving right along, we heard that another concern for Rosen is TMI—too much information. His organization is struggling to identify what information must be saved and for how long. The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases is a research organization, which adds its own set of challenges. For example, when Rosen asked one of the scientists there how long information should be saved, the scientist said, "Forever."

Of course.

"On what media do you store information that must be saved forever?" I asked.

Precisely the problem, I was told.

The CPs discussed many other issues, including wireless (as in testing 802.11n), the challenges involved when a company quadruples in growth (I guess that's one of those good problems to have), virtualization as a disaster recovery technology and standardizing desktops.

Finally, Gannett IT Architect Gary Gunnerson gave us the latest on a project that's been occupying a lot of his time: the development of Nimbus. A rich media ad tag, Nimbus delivers constantly updated weather conditions, forecasts, warnings and watches across the United States. Nimbus gets its satellite-delivered data from the NOAA and the National Weather Service, and it is currently being beta tested on a number of sites.

What's top of mind for you? Your comments are most appreciated. Are you interested in becoming a Corporate Partner? If so, drop me an e-mail: debra.donston@ziffdavisenterprise.com.

--Debra Donston