Like the French waiting for the Yanks to storm the beaches of Normandy, Microsoft is waving its flag of welcome to the U.S. Army and its decision to deploy Windows Vista on hundreds of thousands of desktops around the world.

According to the Army News Service, the Army will upgrade more than 700,000 desktops to Vista and Office 2007. The primary reason for the migration: security, user experience and to ease the migration to Windows 7.

In its usual fashion, Gartner recently released an advisory to enterprises to avoid an immediate migration to Windows 7—due out at the end of the year—until it’s undergone a thorough shakeout. The end of that shakeout period is usually marked by the release of Service Pack 1.

The Army actually mandated the Vista migration last November, seeking to capitalize on its encryption and document security features. The Army says it has been testing Vista since its 2006 release, and came to the conclusion that it was secure and robust enough to support its operational needs. However, in fielding the operating system, it’s discovered that many of its desired security features also come with a steep learning curve.

So far, the Army has migrated more than 44,000 desktops to Vista. The remaining 700,000 desktops in its digital brigade will make the transition by the end of the year - or around the same time Windows 7 becomes available.

The long and short of it is Windows Vista has gotten a bad rep. Microsoft did deliver on many of its security improvement promises when it started the development of the operating system in 2001. Several security reports, including those published by Microsoft, show the number of vulnerabilities discovered in Vista are significantly lower than those in XP. It may be a resource hog, but the truth is that many features, such as Account Protection, which blocks applications from being installed without user interaction, go a long way toward keeping users safe from unintentional attacks. eWEEK recently did an excellent analysis of Windows security myths and realities.

Microsoft says Windows 7 will have even more security improvements while reducing the operating footprint on the client. That may be true, but two questions linger: Does it matter and who cares? With more and more applications migrating to the Web, the operating system is losing its relative importance. Soon, everything will be inspected, dissected and rejected in the cloud before it ever hits the client. Microsoft’s own ForeFront Online and other security offerings hope to be part of the rising Web-based security wave.

So salute to the U.S. Army for putting boots on the digital ground where many enterprises have feared to trot. May you find Windows 7 before the next Windows release in 2015 (or whenever it comes out).