This year has only just begun for many workers, but 2008 already looks like being busy for IT departments, with new service packs, releases and updates due ­ - and that’s just Microsoft products.

The availability of the first service pack for Office 2007 in December was followed by a release candidate version of SP1 for Windows Vista, itself due later this quarter. The same goes for a preview version of SP3 for Windows XP, made available before Christmas, while this quarter is expected to see the launch of Windows Server 2008 and a new version of Office for Apple Mac systems. Anyone feeling slightly overwhelmed yet?

While the expected impact of Windows Server 2008 is now being downplayed by some industry observers, the arrival in the near future of service pack updates for both Vista and XP is bound to fuel the debate over whether businesses should upgrade to Microsoft’s latest desktop platform.

Vista SP1 could prove to be the catalyst for some companies holding back their desktop migration plans, but reports from those that have already tested the update suggest it does not address several of the major gripes with Vista. Performance is one bugbear, with Vista making even beefy systems seem inadequate for the task. Alas, SP1 does not seem to offer significant improvement. Application compatibility has also been an issue, but Microsoft has now warned that even some software that now runs under the release version of Vista may have problems with SP1.

The update supposedly fixes various reported quirks, but will it see changes to the one aspect of Vista that has caused the most ire ­- the user interface? While the nagging User Account Control (UAC) feature can be turned off, the new desktop can prove confusing, and in my opinion actually makes tasks more time-consuming than in older versions of Windows.

With all this in mind, many businesses have adopted one of two attitudes; either that migration is inevitable, or that they are determined to keep running Windows XP for as long as possible, and will perhaps skip Vista altogether and move directly to its successor, Windows 7, due in 2010. Some businesses are said to be moving to Mac or Linux, but it is difficult to imagine many large enterprises taking such action.

If you believe that Vista adoption is inevitable, then you probably have migration plans in hand, even if you have been waiting to see what SP1 might hold. But if you are wavering, what does the forthcoming XP SP3 mean? Will it assure IT departments that they are right to hold back from Vista for the time being?