back to article Want to do a desktop refresh? How would you like to pay?

Developments in both the worlds of PC technology and the global economic climate have conspired to slow down much of the “routine” desktop upgrade cycle that takes place periodically in most organisations. The combination of Windows Vista and the financial meltdown combined to push many refresh projects onto the back burner, …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. jake Silver badge

    What a palaver ...

    Hire competent IT staff, and roll FOSS out in-house. How hard is it?

    It works for microsoft^W, yahoo, google & IBM, right?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    How hard is it to take the guess work out.

    Why should IT be any different than any other budget, heres your X pounds for the year, spend it wisely, don't go over, don't go under. Remember, another budget next year. Can't be hard, can it?. Once you know what the expected costs are going to be, you put in your request for the next year, if it's justified, you maybe get it. If it isn't, you don't..

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Corporations could easily move ...

    many desktops to something like PC-BSD, a FreeBSD derivative. Much of the software used by corporations is now browser based, theoretically, making that software OS agnostic. For companies that want or require support contracts these can be had through iXsystems.

    I do not work for nor receive any benefit from PC-BSD or iXsystems nor does anyone I know, other than the use of a great OS for which I would like to thank them.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    Just rip out the MS infrastructure...

    And replace most of your IT staff or send them on expensive training courses.

    Retrain most of your users to use some bullshit leftie pinko desktop that does not have a start menu

    Deal with the fact that no matter how good you think it is, the Sales Director can't install iTunes so they'll bitch about it.

    Enjoy the fact that you lose stuff like AD in favour of debugging your own hacked together scripts, new staff have to be brought up to speed on this because they'll be coming for a totally different environment.

    Rather than having people you can let out in daylight working in your IT department the whole place will become like a bad stereotype filled with ponytails, black tshirts and dandruff.

    Of course if you are seriously thinking about doing this then you'll never get to make a decision like that because you don't think 'big picture' enough. Linux on the desktop is a pipedream for all you folks sat at home with your home built PC masturbating over Felicia Day.

  5. Stephen Bungay
    Stop

    Costs vs sustainability....

    Leasing and subscription based services are both good and bad, it all depends on how "future-resistant" you want your company to be. The control of future-costs, as many are now finding, must not be underestimated. With leasing and subscriber fees a continuous outflow of cash is guaranteed, although you get better tax breaks these are only beneficial if you have something to be taxed. When hard times come (and they will come) the business that does not actually "own" anything will find they now have less cash coming in with more or less the same amount going out.

    As much as it sounds like an oxymoron, change is the constant here, expenses that are controllable coupled with a long-term view is always a better hedge against an uncertain future. Buying hardware might seem to be foolish, but it is a long-term view. Migration to Linux and things like ODF might seem to be a mavericks decision, but they really are fiscally conservative choices, extending the useful life of hardware and software, eliminating the lease-renewal-treadmill, eliminating the ability of software vendors to push expensive changes for minimal beneficial returns to your enterprise, allowing you to better controll the IT cost to benefit ratio.

  6. Ku...

    Leasing and finance purchase are an option

    Not a great option for some. Understand the cost model being put in front of you and thrash itout with people in your finance team who are probably better skilled to see a vendors attempt to pull the wool over your eyes than you are....

    If you are deploying W7 then its a lot easier as the images are "hardware agnostic" so you can deploy to mixed hardware easily. Legacy kit is not the pain it was with Windows XP.

    The problem is, as always, making the business case. How will a desktop refresh improve the bottom line? For some reason big IT projects are finding it harder to get finance approval at the moment. Wonder why that could be?

  7. Adam Salisbury
    Boffin

    Rampant consumerism finally abating?

    This three year refresh cycle is pretty much rubbish for most organisations, just a window dressing excerise in many cases As a result of the tough business conditions we're facing and a recent. costly merger and subsequent "syngerisation" and office move our little SMB is still running on 6 year old kit that isn't breaking a sweat yet...and it's all Wintel/Microsoft servers and laptops.

    With virtualisation coming into it's own it's becoming more and more easy to extend the life of much your kit, the justifications for most upgrades are speculative and mostly intangible, existing only to make the case for a budget equal to, or bigget than last year's.

    The salefolk always say they "need" the most shiny laptops and phones to convey an image of professionalism and competence (as if having the most shiny trinket would indeed fool anyone). Finance will always plump for bigger and better desktops for heavy-duty number crunching and as they pay the wages they'll nearly always get them!

    It's always going to be a nightmare justifying the pruchase of more infrastructure kit as it's very difficult to measure a person's productivity and therefore how much revenue is generated by said productivity, especially if you're not performing a "revenue leading" role (sales, project manager, account mamanger etc).

    It's something companies really need to sort out because while it's diffcult to quantify the benefits of having better, faster systems it's very, very easy to qunatify the cost of an ageing server coughing up it's disks or the comany's website or CRM spontaneously combusting at the end-of-quater!

  8. Eddie Johnson
    Grenade

    Its an Old and Simple Rule

    If you can't afford to pay cash you can't afford it.

    If you need to break it into phases for a gradual roll out fine. Replacing 20% any given year is a good place to start. And end.

    Any other sort of financial gimmickry cooked up is simply that, gimmickry. Anyone who uses the words amortize, leverage, monetize, lease-back or wholly owned subsidiary should be lead to the door. Oh, and anyone who says "cloud".

    1. jake Silver badge

      @Eddie Johnson

      You forgot a biggie in your list of "out the door w'ye" words ... namely "cyber".

This topic is closed for new posts.