“Even as Microsoft touts the added benefits of Windows 2000,
such as improved manageability, industry analyst Gartner Group has
warned for most companies migrating to Windows 2000 from Windows NT
Workstation 4.0, or Windows 9x, return on investment within three
years will be ‘difficult’.
According to Gartner analyst Michael Gartenberg… ‘Through to
2002, 80 per cent of the enterprises that migrate to Windows 2000
will fail to achieve ROI within three years from cost savings alone
and 80 per cent of all Windows 2000 migrations for enterprises with
more than 500 desktops, will exceed their budgets for time or money
by at least 25 per cent.’
Gartner warned that its migration cost estimates are for
desktops and do not consider the costs for implementing back end
servers or Active Directory, which will be needed to optimise the
operating system’s performance.
Gartenberg added: ‘Operating system migration is a time
consuming, labour intensive and expensive undertaking,’ he said.
‘Despite the benefits and total cost of ownership improvements
of Windows 2000, the cost of migration will make it prohibitive for
many enterprises.’ “