Gartner analysts said most organisations will need to find extra funds or redirect budgets away from other projects to complete the Windows migration on time.
"Corporate IT departments typically prefer to migrate PC operating systems (OSs) via hardware attrition, which means bringing in the new OS as they replace hardware through a normal refresh cycle," said Charles Smulders, managing vice president at Gartner. "Microsoft will support Windows XP for four more years. 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 usual planned hardware refresh before support for Windows XP ends."
Faced with this need to accelerate migration in 2011 and 2012, organisations have three options:
Accelerate PC Replacement Plans
Buying new PCs with the OS upgrade ensures that machines have a full set of compatible drivers and a basic input/output system (BIOS). This course of action also reduces the number of times the machine is touched during its life and ensures that it will have a reasonably long operational life with the new OS over which to amortise the costs of the migration.
Assuming a 10,000 PC environment, where all PCs are replaced, Gartner estimates that the migration cost per PC will be between $1,205 and $1,999, depending on how wellmanaged the environment is. While the overall cost to migrate is lower than other scenarios, the down side is that the capital costs account for about 60 per cent of the total replacement cost, so the capital budget will be larger than in the upgrade case.
Upgrade Installed PCs
Using existing PCs will reduce the capital costs of migration, but will not reduce the labour costs of migration. Assuming the same setup as above - a 10,000 PC environment, where all PCs are upgraded - the migration cost per PC will be between $1,274 and $2,069, depending on how wellmanaged the PC environment is. This assumes that 25 per cent of the machines will need a hardware upgrade to run the OS.
While the capital costs are reduced in this case, upgrading an installed PC simply postpones the inevitable replacement for two to three years. Users will need to be migrated twice, rather than once, during a fouryear period.
Evaluate Partial Migration
For task workers, such as dataentry roles (these account for about 15 per cent of the population in a typical organisation), migrating from a PC to a hosted virtual desktop (HVD) environment is an alternative to PC migration. It would potentially speed up deployment, because it is one image deployed centrally. However, an HVD does not solve the budget issues, because of the incremental cost of the data centre and network infrastructure needed to run an HVD. Also, it does not solve the IT support staff issue, since they will be involved in the HVD rollout.
The Cost of Labour
"Whether replacing or upgrading PCs, it is clear that Windows 7 migration will have a noticeable impact on organisations' IT budgets," said Steve Kleynhans, research vice president at Gartner. "Based on an accelerated upgrade, we expect that the proportion of the budget spent on PCs will need to increase between 20 per cent as a bestcase scenario and 60 per cent at worst in 2011 and 2012. Assuming that PCs account for 15 per cent of a typical IT budget, this means that this percentage will increase to 18 per cent (best case) and 24 per cent (worst case) which could have a profound effect on IT spending and on funding for associated projects during both those years."
Gartner expects the cost of IT labour to increase during 2011 and 2012 as demand for Windows 7 migration services spikes. These cost hikes are likely to continue in 2013, as organisations recognise that they are behind in their migrations.
"We estimate that large and midsize organisations worldwide will migrate approximately 250 million PCs to Windows 7, during the migration timeline, so it makes sense for organisations that plan to leverage external services to line up service providers early," Mr 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.
Additional detail is available in the Gartner report "Prepare for Your Windows 7 Migration Crunch". The report is available on Gartner's website at http://www.gartner.com/....
About Gartner Symposium/ITxpo
Gartner analysts will provide more detailed analysts regarding Windows 7 migration issues at the upcoming Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2010, 8-11 November, in Cannes, France. Celebrating its 20th anniversary, Gartner Symposium/ITxpo is the world's most important gathering of CIOs and senior IT executives. This event delivers independent and objective content with the authority and weight of the world's leading IT research and advisory organization, and provides access to the latest solutions from key technology providers. Gartner's annual Symposium/ITxpo events are key components of attendees' annual planning efforts. IT executives rely on Gartner Symposium/ITxpo to gain insight into how their organizations can use IT to address business challenges and improve operational efficiency. Additional information is available at www.gartner.com/eu/symposium.
Members of the media can register for the event by contacting Laurence Goasduff at laurence.goasduff@gartner.com.