By Tim Ferguson, 10 June 2009 10:32
NEWS
Despite its imminent release, Windows 7 isn't likely to hit business desktops any time soon.
A recent silicon.com CIO Jury found that many IT chiefs are putting off the migration to Windows 7 until at least 2011 but it's clear from their comments that this isn't a rejection of the new OS, but more a question of priorities.
As much as Microsoft might want them to follow its product roadmap closely, IT chiefs have different considerations that will dictate when they make the jump to the new Windows operating system.
One such consideration is the current economic situation, doubtlessly prompting budget-squeezed IT chiefs to hold back on migration projects. Unless it makes hard economic sense to invest in a new operating systems for the business, it's unlikely to get the sign-off from those holding the purse strings.
Steve Clarke, systems and operations director at the TalkTalk Group, told silicon.com: "The idea of asking the board to sign off a desktop OS upgrade project makes me shudder. I'm sure Microsoft have conjured up some wonderful ROI models, but right now with belts continuing to tighten it would be a sure-fire way to lose the trust and support of the board, and I for one am not prepared to do that."
Florentin Albu, ICT manager at Eumetsat (European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites) explained: "It is more difficult to justify the cost of the upgrade unless dependencies coming from the line-of-business applications are an issue."
Mark Beattie, CIO of LondonWaste, added: "Budgets have to be spent in other areas at the moment."
Migrating a company onto a new operating system may be fine and dandy when there's money to spend and the benefits of upgrading are clear cut - but when the existing OS is doing its job just fine, such a migration just doesn't add up for many businesses.
It seems Windows XP is still performing adequately for many businesses and several CIOs have said they will continue using the OS for as long as possible.
Jacques René, CTO of aerospace consultancy Ascend, said his company is planning to stick with XP for as long as there is support available and in order to complete a desktop virtualisation programme.
But according to TalkTalk's Clarke, even the question of ending support will not deter XP users: "XP will continue to do the job with or without support from Microsoft," he said.
Not all organisations are likely to agree with Clarke, however, and support may be one of the factors that eventually makes businesses take the plunge with Windows 7.
Ben Acheson, implementation manager at office supplies company Office Team Group, said: "When Microsoft withdraws support for XP we will all be forced to migrate. Other than that I see no reason to waste money moving away from XP, which does everything I need it to. "
Echoing Acheson's sentiments, Peter Crowe, IT director of clothing retailer Fat Face, said that any upgrade to Windows 7 would be dictated by...
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Comments
There are 3 comments. Join the discussion
1. karen challinor
business doesn't need to upgrade, they have a product that works well in XP, why should they pour money into Microsoft's coffers upgrading hardware and software that already meets their needs when there is no major benefit to drive the process
as for losing support, well a lot of people have been trained to support XP so if Microsoft drop support there are plenty of people who can pick up the slack for problem solving, bug fixes can be lived without and the problems worked around for a while longer
in short there's no desperate need to upgrade on anyone except Microsoft's part
and thats before we get to the "once bitten twice shy" attitude, Microsoft destroyed a lot of trust and forced businesses to spend a lot of money solving problems they didn't need to with the release of Vista
2. Nick Cole
Windows XP is a viable, well known and useful OS. The value of MS support for it is highly doubtful, and if nothing else the retraining for end users and support staff renders migration even more difficult.
Unless there is a good functional reason for migrating then it is a complete waste of money and time. It only seemed like yesterday that Vista was being pushed and lauded (by Microsoft alone).
With increasing complexity, the greater the need for correspondingly complex testing and proving. It seems that MS are stuck in a 2 or 3 year product cycle and expect everybody else to play to their tune. If instead of telling us what software they are prepared to give us, they listened to end users and supported what we want instead then perhaps the business model would sort itself out. We may even see incremental improvement upgrades and better support as well!
Unless we can see a benefit from the new version then we will not take it. I can carry out everything I want to do quite happily on XP and on a cheap laptop/pc, without having to buy a new machine to go with the software.
3. anonymous
ubuntu is a lot more viable desktop alternative than windows. we migrated our desktops to ubuntu and haven't lost a step business wise.
users are happier and are rebooting their desktops a lot less often and are more productive.
you really don't need windows to run a business or anything for that matter.
lets see if you were on microsoft's upgrade roadmap you would of just finished upgrading and buying licenses with vista and now you would have to buy more licenses and upgrade to windows 7.
we upgraded three times within that time period without any costs and one command and our business just kept on rolling.
why would we even consider windows anymore. it just isn't a viable business solution anymore.