To upgrade or not to upgrade...that is the question.

pacetti over 10 years ago 1 minute read time

"To upgrade, or not to upgrade, that is the question:

Whether 'tis Nobler in the mind to suffer

The Slings and Arrows of outrageous license upgrade fees,

Or to take Arms against a Sea of troubles (i.e. slow PCs and poor performance)

And by upgrading everything end them..."

- Spamlet, an IT guy in Denmark

According to Andy Patrizio, the Microsoft Explorer at NetworkWorld, some of you IT pros out there may be holding out on upgrades of mission-critical software because license upgrade fees are simply too steep for your enterprise. In his article, Patrizio relates that, on a recent trip to the doctor, he noticed she was still running her office on Windows XP:

"...she is still using an XP machine that is quite old. When you can watch windows redraw as they open and close, you know your PC is slow.

The problem wasn't getting a new PC, she could swing that. The problem was that the specialty software she uses that had been upgraded for Windows 7 required an upgrade fee of close to $10,000." [source]

That $10,000 upgrade fee for medical software was keeping his doctor from upgrading her dinosaur of an office PC. Reading this, I got to wondering how big a problem this might actually be in the realm of network management. Hopefully, of course, it isn't, because you're running best-in-class solutions from SolarWinds at a price point that simply can't be beat, so you can afford to keep everything running tip-top. And, if you're not, may I direct your attention to our IT management solution finder?

A few of the comments to Patrizio's article provided some potentially workable solutions for his doctor, mostly along the lines of improving performance by upgrading her hardware, with her OS upgrading in the process, and saving money by running a virtual machine for the specialty software. That, or something similar, might actually work, but it is, of course, far from ideal.

So, I'm curious, and I want to hear from you, esteemed IT pro: How often and how long have you delayed an upgrade due to its prohibitive expense? Is the case Patrizio encountered common? What could be done to address the issue?

jkump over 8 years ago

Unfortunately, I think this is far more common than one would think. In most of the industries that I have been a part of, they tend to hold off upgrading the most important equipment and software as it is deemed too costly but then the core of the business is in jeopardy when issues happen. If the upgrades happen on schedule, then the issues are lessoned.
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Bahlkris over 10 years ago

I work in the healthcare space and one thing I see over and over that amazes me is these big fancy medical instruments that come in at hundreds of thousands of dollars, and they perform very critical functions, but their software upgrades are just crazy expensive. Which always blows my mind because to sit and look at one of these machines from a desktop or systems point of view most of them are ancient hardware designs some of them don't even come with IP functionality and require serial interface. More than a few times have I seen upgrades in these systems ignored due to cost and I know of some that are still running Windows 2000 right now at this very moment. Hmmm maybe its good some of them can't talk IP after all.
I cant help but wonder what happens from a liability or legal standpoint when a company cant afford to pay an upgrade cost for a system that has an exploit, then that exploit gets taken advantage of.
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