There’s no choice. And when Microsoft has solved the issues that were around earlier, why not, he asks.

Adding that there is no downgrade option this time, like the one available with Windows XP, he points out that the cost of not migrating could be expensive, in view of the situation on upgrades, and the not-so-happy experience on Vista.

“We recommend that it’s good to migrate now, instead of waiting for a service package that would take seven to nine months. The adoption and acceptance also looks good for Windows 7 right now. I see no reason for not migrating now.”

There’s no point in holding on, he stresses and advises to start application testing on the new Windows OS now.

His key argument is the status of XP, which will lose mainstream support by April next year. Since ISVs won’t be supporting it, there’s an opportunity cost of not migrating.

Indeed, the migration planning cycle is forcing IT decision makers to reckon out how long it will take to get all their XP desktops to Windows 7 before XP support runs out or before application vendors quit producing XP versions of upgrades or new software, and this is predicted to happen as early as 2012.
No doubt, Gartner is advising users to be off of XP by 2012.

But there is a counter-view too.
Rave reviews alone can not spur to loosen a CIOs purse strings.

Vista got similar reviews, argues V Subramanian, deputy general manager, CISO, IDBI Bank.
“We took some 150 license for laptops during Vista but good we had a backward compatibility. We were buying Vista but we wanted to have a safe back-up option. It so happened that people shifted back to XP.”
 
In fact, a majority of current Windows users still use XP, which is getting to be nine years old now.

After the launch of Windows Vista, many had no option but to buy PCs pre-loaded with Vista. Some paid extra to 'downgrade' to Windows XP. Vista reportedly had issues like widespread reports of sluggishness, frequent hangs and crashes, incompatibility with certain software and hardware.

Now, nearly 90 per cent of existing desktops and laptops within corporations can support Windows 7, but many of those assets are aging and migration to the new Microsoft operating system would only be a limited support here, according to a survey released last week.

Softchoice, that conducted the survey, collected data from 450,000 PCs at 284 North American organizations between November 2008 and August 2009.
The Softchoice survey found that 88 per cent of PCs within the average organization meet the minimum system requirements to run Windows 7. That percentage compares to three years ago when only 50 per cent of existing PCs in organizations could meet the minimum requirements to run Vista, as cited in a media report showing the survey results.

Companies will have to weigh the potential costs associated with maintaining those aging machines against the cost of a migration to new hardware/software and upgrading of some existing applications. Another important suggestion is to Budget carefully. 

Gartner's model shows that migration costs could be $1,035 to $1,930 per user to move from Windows XP to Windows 7, and $339 to $510 per user to move from Windows Vista to Windows 7 depending on an organization's approach.

Also, migration planning, plumbing issues, upgrades, testing and deployment planning should be looked into. With the imminent Windows 7 comes a checklist for enterprises from Gartner as well.

While analysts maintain that it's nearly inevitable for enterprises to move to Windows 7, IT honchos like Subramanian say, “We need some time. We will see how the industry catches up to this and also how as a customer I would benefit.”
It’s a wait and watch here too.