Every so often, you see a research survey that shows IT organizations plan to buy Windows tablets or Windows Phones more than any other type of mobile device. Then you look at the data on what people actually buy and don't notice Microsoft technology gaining any appreciable traction. So why does IT keep saying it plans to buy Microsoft technologies that users don't want?

The answer has to do with a sort of in-breeding within IT organizations. Many IT organizations are at heart Microsoft shops, running Windows Server, Exchange, and SharePoint for much of their systems. Yes, they run Unix and Linux, too -- maybe even a mainframe or two -- plus an ERP system from Oracle or SAP and a databse from Oracle or IBM. But the mainstay computing and application platforms come from Microsoft. At the client side -- that is, what the users get -- the baseline is a Windows PC running Microsoft Office and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Other vendors' apps may pop up, but the Microsoft portfolio is again the core.

IT simply expects that Microsoft core to extend into the newfangled technologies such as mobile and cloud. Never mind the evidence to the contrary -- Microsoft has long been the answer, so it surely will be there, too -- if IT only waits long enough to outlast users' Apple, Google, and Amazon.com foolishness.

That "waiting for Microsoft" mentality is why IT keeps hoping beyond any realistic basis that Windows tablets will displace iPads, Windows Phones will displace iPhone and Android smartphones, and Office 365 will bring Office nirvana to those foreign devices that manage to survive the coming Microsoft utopia, getting rid of Quickoffice, iWork, Google Docs, Evernote, Box, and Dropbox in the process. It's why the knee-jerk reaction of so many people is to try to deploy desktop virtualization via VDI on PCs and tablets alike, so they all run the standard Windows software instead of the apps that users actually find more value in and better fit the mobile and cloud contexts.

Waiting for Microsoft? You might as well be waiting for Godot.

Yet many IT pros continue to wait. Andrew Borg, the chief mobile analyst at Aberdeen Research, explains: "There is the long-hoped for (and not yet delivered) integration across smartphone, tablet, laptop, server, data center, and cloud -- one ring to rule them all."

As Borg says sarcastically, "It's not an unreasonable expectation, just perhaps not in our lifetime coming from Redmond -- or at least not until Windows 9. (But that's what they said about Windows 8 when Win7 shipped.) I hold Steve Ballmer directly responsible for the a) lack of vision and strategy, b) shoddy execution, c) god-awful and misdirected marketing, and d) global warming."

Borg is not alone in this sentiment. I've heard it from multiple analysts; Borg's just more colorful in how he presents the situation.

The problem is that Microsoft hasn't delivered. Windows Phone 8 remains less secure than iOS and Samsung's SAFE extensions to Android. Borg has called for "the impeachment of [Microsoft CEO Steve] Ballmer for chasing after Apple in the consumer market, while Apple ate their lunch in the enterprise. And he still hasn't fixed it!"

In the tablet space, Windows RT isn't compatible with Microsoft's mainstay management tools, and it doesn't work well with Microsoft's new Intune small-business management tool, the InfoWorld Test Center has found (yet Intune handles iOS easily). And Office is hard to use via gestures in Windows 8 and RT tablets and touchscreen PCs.

Heck, Windows 8 is hard to use, period -- on any type of PC. You have to wonder how much longer Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Lenovo will play along with Microsoft's Windows 8 delusion and either start marketing Windows 7 in its place or quietly phase out of the PC market (where none makes much of a profit anyhow).

And Microsoft's Internet Explorer 10 remains the least HTML5-compatible browser -- by far. If it didn't come with Windows and if so many enterprise apps weren't chained to its ActiveX technology or its Java version, I doubt anyone would use it.

Not only has Microsoft failed to figure out how to deliver compelling -- much less equal -- smartphones, tablets, or PCs, it has decided to restrict most of its software crown jewels to its flailing hardware platforms. SharePoint doesn't work well on OS X, and not at all on iOS or Android, though some third-party tools try to fix the gap. Office has always been crippled in OS X, and its Office 2013 Web version is passable at best on an iPad (true, a major change from last year, where it was unusable) -- but it won't run in Android. To be fair, Office is horrible in Windows Phone, too.

It's clear Microsoft's strategy is to withhold its better technologies to force users to stick with the inferior Windows platforms. IT is waiting for that magic day when Microsoft's Windows delivers beyond the legacy desktop.

Users, meanwhile, have moved on. They'll buy more tablets than PCs this year, and adoption will only accelerate as users start augmenting their PCs at work with tablets, not just buy them for home use as is usually the case today. In the meantime, they're learning they don't really need Office: Quickoffice on iOS and Android takes care of most of their tasks, as does iWork's trio of Keynote, Pages, and Numbers on iOS and OS X. Because SharePoint doesn't work on non-Microsoft platforms, users have discovered Box, Dropbox, and similar services, all of which play well with their Windows PCs, too. Microsoft has cut off its nose to spite its face -- and taught users they don't need Microsoft any longer.

If IT doesn't get a clue, users may decide they don't need IT any longer either. IT needs to stop waiting for Microsoft and instead deal with the reality: Client computing tech is now heterogeneous, and Microsoft doesn't have all the right answers.