Microsoft could cost you more

Good news for some; for the rest, it could take focus and money away from projects and improvements for performance measurement and BI systems.

The IDC study (paid by Microsoft) concluded that Microsoft's new Vista operating system (in the European Union) will require billions of dollars and more IT employees to focus on the upgrade. Some will argue the benefits of the new software outweigh the costs. Really?

Silicon Valley Sleuth shares their comments and here's the IDC study.

First some numbers. For every Euro that is spent on Windows Vista, companies on average will spend another 14 Euro on downstream economic activity (hardware, services and third party software applications). This is not going to be a simple upgrade of Windows. CIOs and IT budgets will feel the financial hit.

And that's a staggering proportion. If everytime a client came to me and asked for the latest and greatest and I told her "it will cost you 14 times the software costs to complete", I wouldn't have her as a client! But if I had a monopoly like Microsoft, then I guess she couldn't turn to anyone else.

Now the benefits. According to IDC, one of the positive impacts for the economy is the 50% increase in IT jobs needed for Vista-related work. More jobs are welcomed but realistically that will mean less IT people and budget focused on content and systems to support business people.

Some may argue that Vista benefits business people, but I haven't come across an executive yet that asked for the latest Windows patch.

For those who have some influence over IT spending, be informed (warned?) that business people may be the ones losing out with Microsoft's new Vista upgrade.