Cost of Windows 7 migration will rise due to lack of skilled staff

As the deadline for moving to Windows 7 approaches, businesses will have to dig deep to keep their operating systems up-to-date

Businesses have little choice but to spend large amounts on moving to Windows 7

Demand for qualified Windows 7 migration IT staff is expected to far exceed supply in 2011 and 2012, as companies move from Windows XP and Windows 2000 to Windows 7.

This excess in demand will lead to personnel charging higher service rates, according to analyst firm Gartner.

Microsoft will stop supporting the XP and 2000 operating systems (OS) in 2013. Other vendors will stop supporting them even earlier. This means businesses will have no choice but to plan their migration to Windows 7 over the next two years.

According to Steve Kleynhans, research vice president at Gartner, businesses tend to migrate to new operating systems by using what is known as attrition. That is, replacing PCs over the course of their normal life cycles and bringing new machines in fully equipped with the new OS.

“The vast majority of companies have always wanted to do OS migrations as slowly as possible. OS migrations are disruptive, costly and they don’t always matter that much to the user,” he explained.

“The problem with the attrition model for Windows 7 is that businesses don’t have enough time. CIOs have to plan it so that they’ve finished migrating systems by sometime in 2013.”

He added that this is a problem that is worldwide because very few businesses have migrated to Windows Vista, and the fact that they will all need to migrate to Windows 7 quickly will put a huge burden on qualified migration workers.

There are three ways that business can migrate to Windows 7.

The first is by replacing all PCs in the business with new PCs with the new OS which, according to Gartner estimates, will cost between $1,205 (£779) and $1,999 (£1,292) per PC, depending on how well-managed the environment is, for a 10,000 PC environment.

The second option is to migrate each PC to Windows 7, which will cost between $1,274 and $2,069 per PC. The third option is to migrate to a hosted virtual desktop environment (HVD) instead of PC migration.

However, this third option is only viable if the business has already planned to move to a hosted environment. This is because there are incremental costs involved in the additional datacentre and network infrastructure needed to run a HVD. HVD also carries an additional IT support staff overhead.

Moving to an open source operating system or shifting to using Apple Macs will not be cheaper than migrating to Windows 7, according to Kleynhans, but he said that there are tools available to help businesses automate the migration, which could help bring down costs.