Beware the high cost of thrash   

 The academics are looking for that missing productivity again.

This time it's the University of California at Irvine that will spend $643,637 of your tax dollars trying to figure out why, after investing trillions in information technology over the past couple decades, the productivity of U.S. businesses is still flat. Actually, that isn't a bad price for a three-year study that will cover 200 U.S. companies along with data from 50 countries . But here's a tip for the researchers: Instead of searching for places where IT productivity is created, try hunting for the holes where it drips away. Maybe, just maybe, the trouble is the high cost oft hrash. Got Windows NT? Did it replace Windows 95? Did you have every version of Windows 3.x before that? Have you upgraded your word processors and spreadsheets regularly? How about your Web browsers? And your development tools - Visual Basic and PowerBuilder and whatever Web-page editor you're using this week? That's thrash -- the unending cycle of upgrades that keeps software vendors swimming in profits and corporate users drowning in unproductive labor. Think about it: How much time did IS spend on those upgrades? How much user work time was lost during installation? How much time was lost during training -- whether it was in a classroom or users just trying to figure out how the new software works? How much extra time and money did you spend because the upgraded software didn't play nicely with other applications, requiring more upgrades, workarounds or fixes? How many customers walked away because a clerk couldn't work the new system or a salesman couldn't reach data he needed to close a deal? That's the cost of thrash. And oddly enough, lots of IS shops have figured out the problem without any academic studies.

They've figured out a solution, too: Slash software upgrades to the bare minimum required to get the job done. Two years ago, 8o% of corporate sites predicted that most oftheir users would be running Windows 95 by now. But only 13% of corporate desktops were actually running Windows 95 as of this spring, according to a survey by Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass. Apparently, somebody decided not to upgrade after all. No Windows 95 means no Office 95 or Office 97 upgrades. No 32-bit application upgrades at all, in fact. No beta-of-the-month for Web browsers. No rush to grab new versions of development tools. Those users running "obsolete" software are still processing words, juggling spreadsheets, browsing Web sites and getting their work done. They're just doing a bit more of it, because they don't lose so much time to thrash. How much are low-thrash shops saving? Maybe the Irvine researchers can find out, but a conservative guess is that for every dollar you don't pay for an upgrade package, you'll save at least $10 in installation, training and support costs. Of course, not everyone's happy that productivity is up and upgrades are down. Some users really miss having the latest toys. And those upgrades-not-taken are taking their toll on software vendor revenue - even Microsoft is warning that its money machine is downshifting from overdrive. If vendors want that business back, they'd better start cranking out upgrades that are worth a lot more than the cost - easier, IS-friendlier and less frequent. Otherwise, they're out of luck. Because smart IS shops are taking out the thrash. And there's nothing academic about that. Hayes is Computerworld's staff columnist. His Internet address is frank_hayes@cw.com

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