IntaPeople News
Staff costs set to rise with Windows 7 migration - 02/09/2010
Companies upgrading to Windows 7 will end up paying higher staff costs if they wait too long to make the transition because of a shortage of skilled IT professionals, analyst Gartner has warned.
The vast majority of UK businesses still use Windows XP as their primary operating system, but Microsoft is due to end its support of the product in four years. Gartner has said that this leaves companies with little time to migrate their systems through the usual hardware refresh.
Businesses will have to accelerate their migration process by purchasing new PCs with compatible drivers, pay professionals to upgrade PCs already in use, or shift some workers to virtual desktops in order to beat the deadline, Gartner has claimed.
The company also said that the cost of IT labour will increase as businesses make their migration arrangements. Charles Smulders, managing vice president at Gartner, encouraged firms to plan ahead to keep costs under control:
“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.”
Businesses should “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,” he added.