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Windows 7 migration to drive up staffing costs

By Stewart Mitchell

Posted on 26 Aug 2010 at 10:11

Companies waiting too long to organise the upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 face a shortage of skilled professionals to manage the migration, according to research from analyst firm Gartner.

The company says demand for properly qualified personnel will push up migration costs as professionals will be able to name their price for undertaking contracts.

“Microsoft will support Windows XP for four more years," said Charles Smulders, managing vice president at Gartner. "With most migrations not starting until the fourth quarter of 2010 at the earliest, and PC hardware replacement cycles typically running at four to five years, most organisations will not be able to migrate to Windows 7 through the usual planned hardware refresh before support for Windows XP ends.”

According to Gartner, to beat the XP death knell, companies will have to either accelerate their migration process by buying new PCs with compatible drivers and BOIS installed, pay professionals to upgrade PCs that are already on their networks, or migrate some workers to hosted virtual desktops.

Whichever path IT administrators choose, they look set for a hefty bill, with Gartner predicting that buying new equipment to move to Windows 7 will push IT spending up by between 18% and 24%.

We estimate that large and mid-size organisations worldwide will migrate approximately 250 million PCs to Windows 7

Labour costs would also surge, Gartner predicted, as organisation look to take on more staff to upgrade from next year through to 2013.

“We estimate that large and mid-size organisations worldwide will migrate approximately 250 million PCs to Windows 7, during the migration timeline, so it makes sense for organisations that plan to use external services to line up service providers early,” Smulders said.

“Begin talks with suppliers now about putting in place contracts that can deliver flexible levels of resources at a fixed rate over the migration period.”

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User comments

migration is easy with planning...

We have just completed our migration of all the school's computers from a Novell/XP environment to a pure AD2k8/Win7 environment and for the most part it went without a hitch. 500+ pcs & 1000 users later things are good. Did not have to buy any new pcs (some RAM upgrades were done though) & only brought in the occasional expert as a consultant. If we can pull this off with some pcs approaching 6 years of age, there is no excuse for businesses not to be able to plan this and implement correctly!

By climberjames on 26 Aug 2010

What he said ^^^

Migration to Win7 is as easy as falling over.

By cheysuli on 26 Aug 2010

Good to see climberjames and it just goes to show that if you get off your arse and upgrade it's not that bad. Fed up of hearing that XP is just fine and it's too hard to upgrade. Using Win 7 at home and then getting stuck with XP at work is soul destroying

By TimoGunt on 26 Aug 2010

No reason to upgrade really.

Windows 7 is crap. We are repenting after upgrading. Tons of things moved around and no longer to be found. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_remo
ved_in_Windows_7 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_remo
ved_in_Windows_Vista. Microsoft really screwed up Vista.

By tuxplorer on 26 Aug 2010

There's no need to hurry as XP wont retire for a long time yet

It's not all true, upgrading is really easy - you don't need to worry - this is just a media push to scare people into moving up. XP still really works - and works very well. Win 7, depending on which version is slow and then depending on your hardware.

If you don't need to upgrade then just ignore the hype and carry on working as you are, downgrade new machines where you can or just transfer your licence to them and the new hardware really is a whizz for XP.

By nicomo on 26 Aug 2010

As needed

Windows 7 brings so many benefits, and XP was outdated, when it was released in 2002.

We are gradually updating, we don't have the budget to upgrade or replace all of the kit, so we are replacing kit with Windows 7, as it gets retired.

So far, apart from a couple of old Canon LiDE scanners and some indutrial measuring equipment, we haven't had any compability issues.

The speed improvements with Windows 7, especially in increasing workflow speeds is well worth upgrading for.

The difference between Windows 7 and Vista is less noticeable, if the user is working well in Vista, there isn't really any reason to upgrade to Windows 7 at the moment.

By big_D on 27 Aug 2010

Both systems can work together

I use XP and Windows 7 Pcs and while I like the Win 7 interface and graphic support, I see nothing wrong with XP for general use.
I did notice a big improvement on speed of an older PC when We installed it.

By daveperkes1 on 27 Aug 2010

Only bug-bear I have with Win7 migrations...

The lack of ability to clone User accounts. We're not a large company, doing massive image roll-outs to identical hardware is never going to happen, but MS have removed the ability to clone a master profile over the default user profile, which then allows anyone who logs into a system, to have the exact company desktops and short-cuts (all apps set ready to go). This is what is going to hamper most SMB IT folk like myself. Duplicating work for a silly oversight is daft. Don't get me started on IPv6 on by default!!

By IainNIX on 30 Aug 2010

@IainNIX

I haven't had any problems with roaming profiles and group policies with Windows 7... It, like Vista, does create a secondary profile for Desktop and Startmenu, which is separate from XP, but other than that, I haven't experienced any problems with profiles and policies.

By big_D on 30 Aug 2010

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