It looks as though many companies will be migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7 en masse, skipping Windows Vista entirely. For many organizations, “hotly awaited” upgrades to Vista like the Windows Vista Service Pack 2 will not be relevant as they prepare to move to an OS that is already getting a lot of good press. This leads naturally to a discussion in your organization about when to switch from a legacy system to the latest version or product.
The decision about when to migrate should not be dictated by marketing material, but by the business requirements. Wait until the moment the business applications critical to your organization are certified by the vendor that they will operate with the new OS.
As well, even if you're really enthusiastic about an OS' advertised capabilities for enabling business functionality, you should still wait at least until the release of the first service pack. That means waiting at least a year for the first bugs to be found and fixed.
There are clear advantages for moving from a legacy technology, whether it’s an operating system or a piece of software. Obviously, you’ll get the latest features and you tend to get better support from the manufacturer. While a company like Microsoft can provide patches and support for older systems, third-party software developers may not ensure that their products run on all versions of Windows (hence, you have the little square on the back of the software package that lists the requirements for running the program). And building in backward compatibility into an OS makes for more problem-prone computing for the end-user.
As in other aspects of IT, the timing of an OS migration is something that has to be planned for carefully in advance. Get the advice of IT experts before you do the migration to ensure the move is really necessary and that your applications will continue to work in the new setup.
Comments (0)Vaclav Vincalek July 20th, 2009 10:30:00 AM