You’re not alone

I recently had the pleasure of chairing a couple of round table discussions at Axxia’s AGM and User Group conference. As usual, my topics involved looking into the future and discussing the plans people had for upcoming projects, as well as looking further ahead to try and predict which technologies might become significant. What was slightly unusual this year was that IT managers were turning up with a burning desire to discuss the latest software and technologies. Rather, everyone was looking for some reassurance that the strategy and timescales they had picked for the latest slew of desktop software from Microsoft was not too far out from everyone else. Luckily, by comparing notes we were able to put their minds at rest, and now though this newsletter we can hopefully reassure a much wider crowd of people.

Vista
Even the mainstream press has picked up the story of the lack of excitement about Vista, so few of you are likely to be panicking about this one. Nobody has any pressing requirement to upgrade from the almost blanket installation of Windows XP. In fact, quite the reverse is true with many IT departments supporting hardware that will simply not run Vista, and a fairly sizable testing and fixing regime required to make sure that applications work. In this latter area, Vista again tightens the assumptions on applications being well written, in a way that was never required on early versions of Windows. As we all know, many legal applications do not fall into this category; they have a long history of being adequate for the job in hand, rather than polished and perfect. However, any software that is not being hung out to dry will be fixed to work with Vista, so there will not be long term issues. Vista desktop images will need to be rebuilt from scratch however, and some applications will need to be installed and run in a different way to previously. As a result, the longer you leave Vista, the more other people will have found and addressed any issues.

The Vista question is slightly affected by the fact that most firms are relying on OEM licences for the desktop OS, and these machines are coming pre loaded with Vista (although XP is remaining as an option long after Microsoft would have liked). Eventually, this subtle pressure will make it easier to accept the inevitable, and Vista will become the new desktop standard. For many firms, this will not be until post Vista hardware has supplanted everything older, when a firmwide upgrade can take place.

Office 2007
Never before has an application upgrade been deemed so unnecessary by the users. The last few Office upgrades have added a few nice but not very important features, and been an improvement on the previous version, while being so similar to the end user that they could be dropped in as a replacement with little or even no training.

Office 2007 however is confusing IT staff who are struggling to find their way around it, while offering no obvious improvements to the end user. Regardless of any testing and development required, the training required is large enough to make it an application that no one is rushing to install. (Actually, there is an exception with Outlook 2007, which is still adding decent improvements and has kept the previous menu interface)

An added complication is the changes required to templates. Some very old templates, for example those including WordBasic code, may finally need to be properly updated. The new ‘ribbon’ interface will certainly affect the design and use of custom menus and toolbars, common in many firms.

The common feeling therefore is that Office 2007 (and for law firms, that really means Word 2007) is to be avoided for as long as possible, although it is accepted that that may not be forever. As usual, there is a file format change, and while Microsoft has produced converters for both directions, past experience shows that minor incompatibilities will eventually force firms to use the system their clients (and other firms) are using. For everyone, the base of home users with Office 2007 pre installed will gradually grow until, as with Vista, it becomes the new standard.

SharePoint
The main added confusion to the above is SharePoint, either in the form of SharePoint Services or the full blown SharePoint Server 2007. Many firms are investigating these collaboration/intranet/portal products as a continuation of their intranet and knowledge management strategies, and even in some cases as a possible document management system.

SharePoint services has the great attraction of being a free product (part of Windows 2003 Server), and hence any use that can be made of it will show a good return. SharePoint Server 2007 attracts the usual Server and Client Access licences, and will work out as a not insignificant sum in most deployments.

However a fully implemented SharePoint solution requires the desktop software to be aware of and support the server side functionality, and that means Vista, Office 2007 and a late version of Internet Explorer. This is in fact the basis of the Office 2007 proposition; the new concept being sold is not a better desktop application, but a suite of client and server products (there are several Office 2007 server products in addition to SharePoint) that can be used to build enterprise applications.

Conclusion
Whatever people may think of the value of Vista over XP, the fact remains that for the vast majority of firms and all (Windows based) home users, you will end up owning the software whether you use it or not. The upgrade cost then comes down to the time and training involved, and whether you do it early enough to have to buy upgrade licences for older machines and possibly memory or other hardware tweaks. Within a hardware cycle, it will have become taken for granted on the desktop.

Office 2007 is a harder call. For most firms, there are no business or commercial drivers to upgrade, and significant costs for licences, development and training. However the relentless march of Microsoft upgrades is usually unstoppable despite that, so most firms are probably committed to an upgrade in the long term.

This upgrade is probably involves the most strategic decision that has been required for some time. To get real value out of the latest office suite, you need to buy into the server/ collaboration model Microsoft are espousing and put in the development time with tools such as SharePoint and InfoPath to create your office workflows and information sharing systems. This in turn requires a commitment to the complete Microsoft centric world view for 2 to 3 IT cycles, or 7-10 years in order to get the return on this investment.

It is worth noting that similar strategic decisions are coming up in the main server world with Exchange 2007 and related server products, especially with Communications Server.

The main point firms should take away is that the installation of Vista, Office 2007 and SharePoint should not be looked at as something that will happen anyway, but rather make a positive choice to go down this route having looked at alternatives. Who knows, while it is unlikely that Microsoft will be ousted completely from firms, some or indeed many may decide to take a different path.

Adam Westbrooke is the managing director of Firstcourt, an IT strategy and management advice company specialising in helping professional services firms. For more information call Adam on 0870 350 3660 or see http://www.firstcourt.co.uk

Published on: 26-11-2007