After almost a year of testing, the NSW Department of Education and Training (DET) admits it could save a "significant amount" of money by adopting Vista's new management capabilities; but will that recoup the cost of re-training 1.2 million users?
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In the second part of this four part interview, Tim Anderson, Information Services Director, explains that currently the DET has to maintain over 100 disk images for its various hardware and software deployments.
Microsoft claims the DET is spending around AU$100,000 per year to maintain each of the images and migrating to Vista will mean savings of almost AU$10 million annually. However, Anderson refuses to put a dollar value on process.
"The ability that Vista has to separate the various layers of the OS -- so we can manage effectively a single image for the whole of the state -- is very attractive to us.... It should have a significant effect on costs," said Anderson.
However, Anderson also notes the cost of retraining 1.2 million users will also be expensive.
"Traditionally we try to make the new platform look as much like the old platform as much as possible.... Some of the changes to the user interface in Vista may well be things users find attractive -- so we may need to include the costs of implementation and training as part of any roll out," Anderson said.
Other parts of this interview can be found here:
Part 1: DET begins slow crawl to a new Vista
Part 2: DET mulls Vista savings, training
Part 3: Licence costs may delay DET Vista plans
Part 4: DET considers Linux on the desktop
