Update September 9: It took a while, but Gartner's Charles Smulders finally got back to me. I suspect it's a typo, and I've sent an e-mail to Gartner asking for clarification.
According to the report, those upgrade costs (including the Windows license) equal more than $1,600 per PC, which is double the cost of a new PC.
Where Gartner loses me in the discussion is with the numbers in the full report, which simply don't add up. If your natural hardware replacement cycle is disrupted, you pay extra. First, you have to pay $150-$200 for a Windows 7 upgrade license, and you have to pay for the parts and labor to upgrade memory, hard disk, and/or video adapters on desktop PCs that you choose not to replace. In that case, you'll be prematurely throwing out perfectly good PCs before their useful life has run out, meaning you'll be paying a "migration tax" equal to 25% of the average cost of a PC, or about $180-$300 per PC. Gartner's calculations assume the average enterprise with 10,000 PCs will need to replace roughly 25% of its machines early. Let's call it the "XP diehard tax," which Gartner says you'll pay in one of two ways: If you're just beginning to realize that you're behind in your migration planning, then Gartner's warnings definitely apply to you. So, what happens if you haven't already started a migration? PCs are depreciable assets, so those costs aren't optional, although their timing is.
According to my calculations, Gartner is pegging the cost of a new PC with a Windows 7 Professional license at somewhere between $723 and $1,199. What might not have been clear in those Gartner numbers that were so widely reported is that they include the capital costs of new PCs and Windows licenses. If you're buying new PCs today expecting them to last four years, they'd better be starting with Windows 7 and not with XP. Gartner assumes PC hardware replacement cycles of 3.25 years for a notebook and a little less than five years for a desktop. If your IT operation rolls like a well-oiled machine, you've already begun deploying Windows 7 on a three- or four-year cycle that will have XP completely off your network in plenty of time for the April 2014 deadline. To hit that 2013 deadline, your migration had better be under way now.Ībsolutely right.
In the timeline that accompanies the Gartner report, 20 are colored bright red and labeled the "XP Danger Zone." In addition, it is prudent to allow some slack in the schedule for things to go wrong, as they always do.
Support for Windows XP ends formally in April 2014, but third-party software companies will probably be phasing out their support during 2013. I agree with Gartner completely on this point. Your migration away from XP should be in the final stages by early 2013. And staying on XP is not an option-at least not for any workstation that is actually connected to the Internet. That sounds about right to me, and is certainly in line with some of the projections I've seen lately. Here are the places where I agree and disagree with the Gartner study.Īccording to analyst Charles Smulders, Gartner estimates that large and midsize organizations will migrate approximately 250 million PCs from Windows XP to Windows 7 in the next two or three years. But if you pinned all your hopes on the "Save XP" movement, you've got some serious catching up to do, and your migration bill is likely to be much higher than it would have been otherwise. The executive summary? If you run a Windows shop and you've been paying attention to the Windows landscape for the past two or three years, you've got few surprises in store, and Gartner's alarming numbers don't apply to you.
After reading it over, I've come up with a slightly different set of conclusions. Gartner was kind enough to provide me with a copy of the full report. In some cases, the numbers just don't add up. But in their zeal to come up with hard numbers, the press release adds more confusion than clarification to the topic. The press release throws out four separate price tags, ranging from $1,205 to $2,069 per PC, with some confusing percentages to quantify overall IT budget increases. Last week, the Gartner Group made some headlines ( including this one from my ZDNet colleague Mary Jo Foley) with a provocative press release that tried to pin a price tag on the cost of migrating to Windows 7.