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….

By: sam

sam — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 02:58:36 +0000

Mike.
Excel 2007 SP0 – Came with the famous "Display(Calculation)" bug.

Fixed in SP1

Just google for "list of issues fixed in Office 2007 SP2"

There is a xl file which gives list of 237 bugs fixed.
There are some shockers
a) "Remove Duplicates" on a range of cells misses some duplicate string values"
b) "Fast scrolling using the mouse wheel can crash Excel"
c) "When an AutoFilter is created on an entire row, data in rows hidden by the AutoFilter gets deleted when entire rows around the data are deleted."

By SP3 a product is almost Ready for Production

By: Jason Morin

Jason Morin — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 21:55:15 +0000

I think when your company has taken a beating due to the recession, you prioritize your IT budget into critical projects and non-critical projects. Upgrading 10,000 users from Excel 2003 to 2007 (even if it's done in phases) at a cost of $240 per user equals $2.4 million and management simply isn't going to spend that type of money on non-critical IT.

By: Ute-S

Ute-S — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 11:36:21 +0000

What do you expect from an IT manager, who is not even interested in testing Office 2010? "We could as well skip a version, we don't have to install everything." was his comment.
The new multimedia capabilities of PowerPoint 2010 would be a big improvement for our daily business, with one or more videos in every presentation. But we experienced huge problems with SAP and Hyperion in combination with Excel 2007 when we upgraded in late 2008.
So how do you balance creativity and bookkeeping and a hesitant IT manager?

By: datapig

datapig — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 00:37:43 +0000

Sam: SP3?! You've got to have a Service Pack 3 to consider a Microsoft Product? Wow…that's tough.

By: sam

sam — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 08:10:19 +0000

a) "no significant" benefits (features)

Make a list of 10 things that can be done in 2007/2010 that simply cant be done in 2003(native features+VBA)

On the other hand there are many things that can be done in the lower versions that cant be done in higher versions.

b) Reduced Office productivity
The new UI in 2007/2010 – offers reduced levels of productivity to Excel users who have used excel for more than 5+ years

With every new release of Excel from Excel 97 to Excel 2003 – MS would publish a "white paper" on improved office "productivity" – They stopped doing that from office 2007

c) Inadequate User Testing
Any product out of MS needs SP3 to reach a certain level of stability, something that happens only after 3 years of launch

d)Increased demand on Hardware