Forrester showed in a recent report how upgrading computers to Internet Explorer 9.0 (and, ultimately Windows 7) can have a significant impact on cost in your company. This is yet another one of those areas where we, at 1E, have been developing solutions for this for so long, and are thankful to see other companies (like our partner, Microsoft) getting on board. Efficiency is hugely important and growing even more critical as the days progress.
Microsoft suggests in a blog post, that an IE9 upgrade will save costs. But, I don’t think they go far enough in the post because there is a cost to actually deploying the upgrade. Microsoft has always provided deployment value for their customers by making deployment kits available for Internet Explorer. This makes it a tad bit easier. But, distributing the upgrade is still costly. The only way to minimize this inherent cost is to, potentially, deploy it at night or when the end-user requests it during business downtime. And, if you know 1E and the 1E products, you know the best way to complete the cost savings picture is using a couple key components of our efficiency solutions.

  1. For night-time deployment use NightWatchman. NightWatchman allows customers to wake computers up during the night, install IE9, and then shut the computers back off. Our customers use this feature constantly for patching and performing other critical PC maintenance tasks.
  2. For on-demand deployment (requested by the end-user), use Shopping. The end-user knows best when their computer will not be in use. Allow them to request the IE9 upgrade for on-demand installation.

Incidentally, NightWatchman, Shopping, and Nomad, used together can provide the lowest cost Windows 7 deployment anywhere.
Here’s an excerpt from the Microsoft blog post about IE9 savings:

Forrester interviewed six companies that were part of Microsoft’s IE9 Technology Adoption Program (TAP) to assess the impact of upgrading from Internet Explorer 8 to Internet Explorer 9. This data was used to model the economic impact a composite organization of 50,000 desktops may expect from deploying Internet Explorer 9. The results show there is a compelling financial reason to move to Internet Explorer 9.
Data source: The Total Economic Impact of Windows Internet Explorer 9, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Microsoft, June 2011
The chart and graph above illustrate Forrester’s findings in calculating the three-year quantified benefits to the organization of moving from IE8 to IE9. The organization’s risk-adjusted benefits are over $6 million over three years. By applying a 10% discount rate, the present value of these benefits equal $5 million. The net present value of these benefits is over $3.3 million with a 15-month payback period. As Forrester notes, “The data collected in this study indicates that migrating from Internet Explorer 8 to Internet Explorer 9 has the potential to provide significant quantifiable benefits and positive net benefit after Year 2.”