Migration skills shortage looms as Server 2003 DEATH DATE approaches A channel-wide migration skills shortage is a real danger this summer as stragglers strain available resources by making an eleventh hour dash to flee Windows Server 2003, distributor veterans are warning. Public and private sector organisation have 176 days to escape the software before extended support expires on 14 July, …
It's not a skills shortage of people who can drive 2008 or 2012. It's a massive shortage of people who are able to actually plan large scale migrations and deliver them on budget while using the people who can drive the OS to do the work.
The main issue is that most organisations have also been ignoring ITIL and TOGAF (among others) and so don't even have a CMDB let alone a service catalog from which to plan the migration, so step one is a huge discovery. Of course there is also a skills shortage in those areas too so that's not necessarily something that happened on purpose. For the larger and less well documented environments we have estimated 3 months or more just for discovery before the planning even starts.
The real "skills shortage" if you could call it that is with the users. I'd be interested to know how many of those physical boxes are acting as terminal servers.
The upgrade from 2003 TS is sensibly 2012 RDS. Sadly, this uses TIFKAM which may be the biggest barrier to an upgrade ever devised.
The only remaining 2003 box we have is our terminal server, which is almost certainly going to be in use long past the EOL date simply because of user rejection of the fucking awful touch screen interface.
Now try selling (expensive!) RDS licenses to upgrade to that, which will lower the productivity of anybody using it.
One can't help but think that a "Plus pack" for RDS on 2012 containing a Win7 like interface would dramatically improve the adoption of 2012.
@Peter2 I have to completely disagree with you there. We're at the point now where users are using Windows 8 at home and wondering why the work computer is so dated. It's the perception of IT people that users can't handle change holding up that change, not the ability of the users. At home that same set of users has managed quite well with updated versions of Office, updated Windows, iPads, Android tablets, Facebook, video messaging and various other completely new things. Somehow they coped without extensive training and therapy. From what I've seen, it's actually IT staff who don't like Windows 8 and are trying to keep users away from it. The abbreviation TIKFAM is a classic example - describing a menu as an interface to suit your agenda. I agree that full screen touch apps ought to be disabled on a corporate non touch desktop, but to imply a user is too stupid to click the massive outlook tile to open their email is ridiculous.
"The upgrade from 2003 TS is sensibly 2012 RDS. Sadly, this uses TIFKAM which may be the biggest barrier to an upgrade ever devised."
No issues at all here migrating hundreds of users and many different applications to RDS on Server 2012 R2. In fact users definitely preferred the new environment.
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