Windows 7 will save up to £100 per PC, says Ballmer

 

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Posted on 5 Oct 2009 at 12:52

Businesses will save up to £100 per PC by rolling out Windows 7, according to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

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The Microsoft boss was in London this morning, attempting to persuade many of the company's biggest corporate customers to migrate to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, both of which are released this month.

And cost savings were, not surprisingly, high on the list of Ballmer's reasons to upgrade, even though he admitted it wasn't the primary focus when the company first started to design the operating system.

"We started building Windows 7 three years ago," Ballmer told the audience. "No-one was talking about 'the new normal', 'the new efficiency' or anything," he added, referring to the recession.

"Efficiency and costs are on more people's brains than at any time I can remember, including the dotcom bubble bust," he said.

"About five years ago, when we launched Windows Server [2003], we ran an ad campaign that said 'do more with less'. If we were to run that campaign again, we'd have to say 'with less, do more'," he quipped.

Cost savings

Ballmer said that businesses deploying both Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 are likely to make the biggest cost savings. He cited features that require both branches of Windows, including the VPN replacement, Direct Access. "The VPN has been a considerable source of costs and helpdesk queries in organisations around the world," the Microsoft CEO claimed.

The enormous Windows 7 beta test - which included 8 million people worldwide and more than 700,000 people in the UK alone - had proven that there were cost savings to be made, the Microsoft chief claimed.

"We have customers now that can talk about that [beta] experience," Ballmer said. "[Business advisers and auditors] Baker Tilly will tell you that it saved around £100 per PC in reduced helpdesk and administration costs. BT [British Telecom] is on the verge of a massive deployment of Windows 7."