Some may be surprised at what I’m about to say because of my history in technology sales and trying to increase those sales on a consistent basis. However, it is for this reason exactly that I am against MOST initiatives to upgrade your company’s software infrastructure, at least for now. I say MOST because there are still many companies who have fallen behind the eight ball with keeping their software up to date, to a point.

I know of many current and former clients who have refused to upgrade their server OS (Windows NT anyone?), desktop productivity suites (Microsoft Office ’97) or outdated and incompatible ERP/MRP systems. They often claim that the cost of upgrading is prohibitive, yet continue to spend a premium annually on customized support and interface alterations (not to mention the increased profit and efficiency which can be gained from well-planned upgrades). Now it’s fair to say that this can often be attributed to management’s perception of technology as a cost center, rather that a profit center, but more on that at another time.

Microsoft recently released its second Beta for Windows Vista (previously codenamed Longhorn) for the desktop. They are also preparing for the release of Office 2007 and Windows Server “Longhorn” all by the end of next year (see Wikipedia article). With the largest presence in the corporate software market of any other company, Microsoft seems to want to control how and when organizations upgrade their existing systems. Now I don’t see any issue with upgrading software for pertinent reasons such as efficiency, collaboration and security, but how do we determine when a software refresh just isn’t necessary?

Some of the latest features to be announced for Windows Vista are increased security (I’ll believe it when they’ve announced Service Pack 2 in the beginning of 2008 or so), better networking ability on a peer-to-peer network (does this really matter in the corporate environment?), increased desktop search functionality (I thought we were supposed to securely store everything centrally?) and other updates related to the GUI interface and user convenience. With a multitude of companies in the market creating add-ons to the traditional desktop OS (i.e. Google Desktop, Xdrive’s online storage for consumers, or using centralized storage for corporations, a good idea anyway) how are the newest features in the Windows OS going to benefit your company?

And is it really worth the cost of ensuring hardware compatibility, deployment time and effort, user and administrative training, software compatibility, etc.? I think it’s always a good idea to analyze the pros and cons of any possible upgrade thoroughly, but for the latest Microsoft creations, I’d wait to make any decisions until after their second generation (SP2) comes out for each product.