Many leading industry analysts have developed independent assessments of the impact of Windows 95 on corporate operations. The reports of two firms, Gartner Group, Inc. and Usability Sciences Corporation, discussed in this section, can assist rollout planners in understanding specifically how Windows 95 reduces the total cost of ownership for a personal computer in your organization.
Two published reports are available, describing the cost of migrating to Windows 95 from Windows 3.x and the effect of Windows 95 on the total cost of ownership of a personal computer. This section summarizes key findings of the reports. To receive the complete report, contact Gartner Group, Inc. at (203) 967-6700 and ask for the Total Cost of Ownership study (reference Personal Computing Service K-820-1094) and the report titled "GUI Operating System Migration: How Sticky Will It Be?" (August 22, 1994).
Highlights of these reports include the following.
Payback period is short.
Gartner Group projects that a typical organization will earn back the cost of migrating to Windows 95 within three to six months, based on support cost savings alone. Assuming that, on an annual basis, Windows 95 costs $1180 less per user to run than Windows 3.1, over five years, Gartner Group estimates that organizations will save nearly $6000 per user. Notice that, even if organizations do not realize this precise reduction in costs, the support-cost savings should substantially exceed the cost of migration.
Migration is justified even when only using 16-bit applications.
Gartner Group recommends that organizations migrate to Windows 95 "if only to run 16-bit Windows applications on a more stable, easier to use platform."
Planning Windows 95 deployment increases potential savings.
In its "Cost of Migration" study, Gartner Group demonstrates that organizations benefit substantially through decreased costs by planning their deployment of Windows 95. In fact, by planning the traditional labor-intensive operations (for example, the installation process) and automating the process, an organization could realize costs of migrating to Windows 95 that are less than the average upgrade cost from Windows 3.0 to Windows 3.1.
Although not cited in these reports, additional payback should result from increased user productivity due to features such as Dial-Up Networking, multitasking, multithreading, and so on.
Usability Sciences Corporation, an independent usability testing group, performed a study on how users are affected by moving to Windows 95. Their study included 75 existing Windows 3.1 users with varied levels of skill in performing common tasks. Details of the study and its findings are available from the WinNews electronic forum.
Highlights of the study's results include the following.
Users get started quickly.
After testing users as they performed specified tasks in Windows 3.1, and then allowing them a 20-minute "play" period with Windows 95, the study found that the same users were almost as fast under Windows 95 in performing comparable tasks as they were in Windows 3.1.
Users perform faster.
Usability Sciences reported that, within 1.5 hours of first using Windows 95, Windows 3.1 users performed operations nearly twice as fast as they did on Windows 3.1.
Extensive user training is not needed.
Because all tests in the study were performed using the online Help that comes with Windows 95, the results demonstrate that lengthy training sessions are not necessary.
As additional reports and studies are published, they'll be placed on the WinNews online forums. Check these forums for periodic updates.