More Proof That Gartner Is Nuts

Office upgrade hard to justify, warns analyst | CNET News.com: "Only companies that are signed up to Microsoft's Software Assurance plan are likely to adopt Office 2007 in the near future because IT managers find it extremely hard to justify an Office upgrade to their board, according to analyst group Gartner.

Speaking at the Midsize Enterprise Summit in Paris on Wednesday, Gartner principal research analyst Annette Jump said that research done by the group showed that only about 2 percent of companies that weren’t signed up to Microsoft’s Software Assurance plan had adopted the previous version of the productivity suite--Office 2003."

Sounds reasonable, except that as usual Gartner doesn't do their research (sad that's their job). The differences between Office 2002 and Office 2003 were fairly slight, and I'd expect a low upgrade rate.

Office 2007, however, is a dramatic change from Office 2003. It's the biggest jump in usability in Office since Word moved from DOS to Windows. And if Gartner thinks that doesn't justify a different set of criteria when deciding to upgrade than going from 2002 to 2003...

Maybe I should start my own research firm. "Kirvin Research: We Actually Think."