Time for a Desktop Upgrade?

very day, managers are confronted by advertisements showing machines more powerful than those on the office desktop at cheaper prices and by users who want to know why their machines in the office are slower than their kids' machines at home. Besides, your information technology folks will want to have the latest and best on everyone's desk.

But how does a manager know when it's really time to upgrade desktop technology?

Over the years, federal agencies have struggled with ways to streamline the acquisition of desktop computers. Some buy them piecemeal or on schedule contracts negotiated by the General Services Administration. For large buyers, the right solution often was large contracts that turn computers into commodities, like the Air Force Desktop contracts.

More recently, agencies have followed industry's lead and are buying what has become known as "seat management," contracting for the hardware, software and support from a single vendor. (See "1001 Ways to Buy PCs," Government Executive, July.) This method of acquisition may help you get a better a deal at purchase time, but it will not answer the technology upgrade question.

As the July article notes, product life cycles are becoming ever shorter. Obsolescence is inevitable. Unless you are prepared to swap out machines several times a year, you will almost always have a machine on your desk that is less capable and was more expensive than you can find today at the local Wal-Mart or Radio Shack.

So how do you decide on the right upgrade cycle for your organization? To demystify the problem, here are some basic principles that apply:

• Seat management. If you enter into a seat management contract, you are typically leasing the equipment and buying a bundle of support services that are like a maintenance contract. If you specify a two-year term, the lessor has to recover the purchase price plus interest (minus residual value) in two years. If you can live with a longer replacement cycle, your costs will go down. So while seat management can help smooth the budget bumps by allowing you to pay a fixed, predictable amount each month, it does not answer the upgrade question.
• Sunk cost. The fact that new and cheaper technology is available is not in and of itself a reason to replace what you already own. There are only three reasons for replacing a piece of equipment:

  1. Functionality-the machine can no longer do the work that needs to be done.

  2. Maintainability/reliability-the machine breaks down frequently, and/or support is not available, making the machine unreliable.

  3. Economics-the cost of operating the equipment (e.g., maintenance, power, space) or the need to enhance users' productivity justify replacement.

• Varying levels of capability. In most organizations, there is no "one size fits all." You likely have high-end users who need fast machines to run complicated models or technology-hungry display software. At the other end, you may even have a few machines available for overflow work that are not connected to your network.

  Do not assume that more senior and technical staff should always have first claim to the most sophisticated technology you own. The data entry clerk who spends long hours in front of the VDT may have more need for a larger video screen.

• Phased upgrading. That old 100 MHz Pentium machine just replaced on the engineer's desk by a 400 MHz will seem like a screamer to the clerk still laboring with a 386. But running an environment with different levels of technology poses problems.
• Configuration management. Especially if you have multiple levels of technology in your office, it is critical to understand the concepts of configuration management. That means, among other things, keeping careful records of, and control over, what is contained on each machine or class of machines and, as appropriate, establishing some notion of version control over both hardware and software. The more models or versions you have, the more complicated it gets.
• Lowest common denominator. Running an environment with multiple levels of technology means controlling software releases as well. If every employee is connected to the network and needs access to e-mail and the organization's intranet, then you cannot use software for mail or information dissemination that does not run or runs intolerably slowly on the network's low-end machines. Higher-end users will run more sophisticated stuff, but don't forget the low end.
• Budgeting for technology upgrades. It is prudent to build phased replacement of a portion of your desktop technology hardware and software (don't forget software upgrades) into your annual funding plan. That avoids the peaks and valleys that budgeteers and appropriators tend not to like.

So keep looking at the latest turbo-charged, shiny new model in the showroom, but then ask yourself whether you really need all that it has to offer.

Franklin S. Reeder heads The Reeder Group, a Washington-based consulting firm he founded after more than 35 years in government.