Is Vista about money or Value?

A Computerworld article describes the reason why Microsoft is having trouble getting businesses to upgrade to the Vista operating system.

It describes the problem as being about money. Because of the recession, most large businesses cannot afford to take on a project to convert from Windows XP to Vista. It costs money for licenses, it costs time and money to do the upgrade. And after upgrading, you get a new slate of problems that you have to diagnose. This means that reliability goes down, productivity goes down. On top of that users have to be retrained.

Now if there was value to be gained by the upgrade, it may make it worthwhile. Traditionally, people in IT have taken upgrades as a normal thing. But upgrades have always cost money, and time, and training and releaqrning how to solve the new set of problems that come up.

Maybe it's time we start thinking differently. Just because the software supplier wants more revenue, is not a good enough reason for users to be buying new licenses. It has to have business value! The cost of upgrading is far too high to waste money and not get business value!

Maybe we need a new model to work with. There are elements of this new model out there in open source and Software as a Service. At least this may keep the upgrades in the realm of the people who may find value from it, the people who provide outsourcing or applications for rent. The average business person has nothing to gain.

The full article can be viewed here.