Comments on: Why Companies Skip the Upgrades

By: Food4Thought

Food4Thought — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 07:14:22 +0000

Not always IT fault. We’re still using Access 97. Upgraded to Office 2002 a couple of years ago and this year we upgraded to 2003 to use the XML functionality to interoperate with our enterprise system. But still using Access 97 because someone validated Access 97. Things are heavily regulated in the biotech industry and software is one of them. Software and their versions undergo a validation process to demonstrate that each function works consistently and reproducibly. Change management paperwork must be routed for approvals prior to validation, which has its own approval process. So it’s an expensive and time consuming process to upgrade. Not necessarily IT to blame…

By: MisMommy

MisMommy — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 20:36:57 +0000

Our company just upgraded everyone to Vista in the last couple of months. Yep, we’re on a platform that Microsoft doesn’t even support anymore (of course, we were on XP right before that – another unsupported platform). There are whisperings that we MIGHT go to Office 2010 by mid-year (we’re on 2007). Although, as Bob (Phillips) said, I don’t think anyone has analyzed the ‘changes’ that will affect us. It’s going to be interesting…

By: datapig

datapig — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 07:30:10 +0000

Bob: I hear you. But at some point, does it not become unacceptable to deny employees 10 years worth of productivity and efficiency improvements?

By: Bob Phillips

Bob Phillips — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 13:51:51 +0000

Mike, I missed the fact that the major software developers had employed you to evangelise their marketing strategy!

Has it never occurred to you that some companies might actually do a benefits analysis, and once they have decided on the costs; identified the benefits; identified those benefits that are real; identified the benefits that actually affect their business; identified the migration strategy and impact; they the make a rational decision that maybe it just doesn’t make sense.

I would argue that it made no sense for any company to upgrade to Office 2007, especially in the last 18 months since 2010 was on the horizon.

I would argue that for many companies, Excel 2000 is still a highly viable Excel version.

@Sam, you forgot the disappearing range names in 2007, that cost me a lot of work.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 00:18:14 +0000

I find it interesting that when companies (and people too) purchase Excel (and the whole office suite) that they never fully use it to it’s full capabilities before Microsoft wants you to move to the next office version. Excel is feature rich yet you can get to using everything.

This single supplier of market dominance requires you get a new operating system and therefore must get (at an additional cost) the lastest version of office to “complement” it. As it turns out Windows XP was better than Vista. Officer 2002 / 2003 what a difference a year makes. Not….