Beancounters at IDC say that small businesses won't have a need to upgrade to the latest Windows 7 operating system.

Research director at IDC, Jean-Marc Annonier said that from a business perspective, the advantages of deploying Windows 7 and trying to take advantage of some of the enterprise features is not really there. He said that mall businesses have several versions of Windows within their IT environment, from early forms of the system to XP and Vista.

Bringing in something new could stuff up their applications and peripherals, from printers and web cameras to USB devices. But he said that businesses won't be jumping straight on to the new operating system in the short term, he says.

Companies will probably leave off upgrades until they have to buy new hardware and that could be some time.