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Rather Rough Rollout for Redmond | 17 comments (17 topical) | Post A Comment
Why the rush to upgrade?[ Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#3)
by gigogogogown on Tue Dec 12, 2006 at 01:44:39 PM PDT

I know Microsoft is a big bad corporation, but why would someone fork over $15,000 without knowing what they are getting? What is the big rush to upgrade?

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Why the rush to upgrade?[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#4)
by jhp on Tue Dec 12, 2006 at 02:07:03 PM PDT

I bet the rush was the need to spend the money on this years budget not necessarily a need to have the software right away. Either way, the customer should be able to spend the money and get what they purchased. Personally if I ordered something from Microsoft I wouldn't think I needed to check if I would get the product delivered to me (until I read this gripe!)

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Just say NO to Microsoft ... at least for now.[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#5)
by billm21 on Tue Dec 12, 2006 at 02:29:30 PM PDT

Budgets or no budgets ... that is not an excuse to upgrade software that has not been tested and proven. My feeling is that anyone that rushes to upgrade to Vista and the new release of Office gets what they deserve!

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Budgets & Buying[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#8)
by Fushigi on Wed Dec 13, 2006 at 11:55:41 AM PDT

Just because they are buying the software (or at least trying to) now doesn't mean it will be installed right away. If the money in the 2006 budget is not spent there's no guarantee that the money will roll over in to the 2007 budget. Frequently budget dollars are use or lose.

Also, perhaps they wanted to use several copies on test machines to do internal testing before rolling out to the masses. For instance, we have over 40 common applications and a grand total of well over 100 applications in use where I work. No release of Windows can be deployed before we've tested the entire portfolio against it. It is a lot of work and takes weeks, sometimes months. But it can't begin until we get the software itself.

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Why bother?[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#9)
by skwerly on Wed Dec 13, 2006 at 01:03:39 PM PDT

"Also, perhaps they wanted to use several copies on test machines to do internal testing before rolling out to the masses."

A reasonable assumption, but why even bother doing so?  What does Vista offer that they don't already get with XP?  Is Vista more secure?  More stable?  Does it support products that XP doesn't?  Is tech support better?  

If the answer is yes to any of those, do the improvements compensate for the expense of weeks or months of testing, installing, debugging, patching, tweaking, sitting on hold, screaming, crying, curling up in a corner, and dealing with DRM technology that insists you have illegal copies even though you're holding a $15,000 receipt?

IT departments the world over have spent years getting their XP boxes working the way they should.  Do people really want to start all over again?  Why?!

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Testing[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#12)
by Fushigi on Fri Dec 15, 2006 at 10:15:11 AM PDT

Well, how would you know what Vista can offer your company without testing it?

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Re: Testing[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#13)
by skwerly on Fri Dec 15, 2006 at 12:13:24 PM PDT

Um.. Google?

I dunno, I'm not an IT guy.  But it occurs to me that one should research a product before shelling out hundreds or thousands of dollars on said product.

D'oh, I just realized I merged the two callers in my mind.  The $15,000 guy is for Office, the other caller is for Vista.  I'm sure they both did their research and decided an upgrade was in their best interests.  Still, my question stands.  Exactly what is so great about Vista, or Office 2007 Pro Plus, that XP and the older Office doesn't already have?  And is the greatness worth the grief?

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Google for testing[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#15)
by Fushigi on Thu Dec 21, 2006 at 05:42:37 AM PDT

Relying on some blog or forum entries or anything shy of a vendor statement of support will fail the test component of a change management system (which is a critical component of the application rollout). That can result in a red flag on a Sarbanes-Oxley, SAS70, or other audit. Corporate management would not be pleased.

Also, many mid-sized and larger firms have internally written applications; nothing on the 'net will discuss those.

SOP is to bring in a few copies of the software, preferably for free but that's not always an option, do an applications inventory, and do compatability testing between the two. For many companies the cost of the staff time for the inventory & testing will far outweigh the cost of the licenses for the test machines. As many companies use a mix of mass-market (Windows) and proprietary/vertical market applications, people from all business units will wind up getting involved in the testing.

My personal opinion is that any new software product, be it from Redmond or elsewhere, should be left out in the sun to dry for a bit before you even bother to test it. Wait for three or so months or until the first round of patches has been released. Then test against the patched version as it likely will have fixed any glaring issues, which will speed your testing. It also lets those who do adopt early work out the kinks in a deployment strategy, letting you use Google to help find eficient methods for deployment.

Especially when it comes to a desktop operating system, this isn't easy. My employer spent months doing the inventory & testing. In the end, though, it was worth it as the deployment went very smoothly.

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Great Article, i agreee with you[ Parent | Reply to This ] (none / 0) (#19)
by Anonymous User on Mon Sep 01, 2008 at 09:49:12 PM PDT

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