Watch your Windows 7 upgrade programme, warns Gartner

The need to migrate from Microsoft Windows XP and Windows 2000 to Windows 7 in a tight time frame will create an extra budgetary and resource burden. Gartner is suggesting that 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 via hardware attrition, which means bringing in the new OS as they replace hardware through a normal refresh cycle," explains 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." Smulders suggests accelerating PC replacement plans – buying new PCs with the OS upgrade ensures that machines have a full set of compatible drivers and 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, he advises.