Mary Jo Davis, editor of Ziff Davis, has written an interesting article in eWeek about the delay of Windows Vista due to quality. Annoyance has been stirred in a very long series of disappointing announcements surrounding Microsoft’s new operating system, revolutionary features have been dropped, so why the recent delay from Fall 2006 to January 2007?

Jim Allchin, Co-President of the Platforms and Services Division, said in a conference call in March, that he would not release Vista if the operating system did not reach a standard of quality, especially around security, drivers and performance, with which he was comfortable.

Reportedly, the quality issue in Redmond has been raised across all divisions inside Microsoft. In fact, Microsoft has pledged to re-engineer software development with an internal project named Software Quality Metrics or SQM. Although information on SQM is limited sources say that it consists of tools to measure the performance of various product components including software reliability, quality of service and usage.

Vista has already suffered several postponements; perhaps the implementation of SQM will keep them on track for the future release.