Making IT Happen

We're planning to roll out a new fleet of laptops and desktops for everyone in the company. One of the key decisions is whether we deploy Office 2003 or Office 2007. (In fact XP / Vista was also a key decision but we quickly decided to stay on XP.)

I canvassed a wide group of other CIO contacts about what they had done or were planning to do. Of 8 responses, 3 were 'already done it', 1 was 'soon', and 4 were 'not this year'.

For the 3 that had done, main lessons were:
1 - training is key - train at the point of deployment, set people's own PC's up before the trainer leaves
2 - wait 6-12 months - still too glitchy (!!!)
3 - use the quick access toolbar in preference to the ribbon.

For the 'soon', interesting feature of approach was the plan to just do Outlook 2007, and to stick on 2003 version of Word, Excel etc

Main factors for the 'not this year' group were:
1 - trialled Vista - slow
2 - no busines case, major benefits
3 - no glory in it for IT (which sounds cynical but I don't think it is - put another way, glory somes from happy consumers)
4 - licencing

Main reason we are looking at it is integration with Sharepoint (we are heavy users of Sharepoint 2007) and general XML integration capabilities. Finally, here's the official MS top 10 benefits of Word 2007 - a lot of which will apply to any of the family - http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA101650321033.aspx

Having a good network is a key asset of a CIO. Not that network - I mean your personal contacts. I'm a member of the Property IT Directors Forum, run by the indefatiguable Chris Lees at Calvis. 30 strong, it's members are the most senior person responsible for IT in almost all of the leading agents and property companies.

We get together from time to time, and if anyone has a question they can send it out and within an hour of two you'll have 10 responses. If you're a CIO and there's one of these in your sector, then join it! (and if there isn't, then start one)