The Four Costs of System Conversion

I wanted to write a short addenda to my last note on System Administration Principles.

In that first part I introduced:

Principle 1:  The Repair or Replace Decision

Principle 2: The Cost of Additional Computers

Principle 3: The Cloud Advantage

Principle 4: The Dual Platform, Dual Browser Safety Net

Principle 5: Legacy Code

Principle 6: Redundant Systems

Principle 7: Backups and Archives

Principle 8: Monetizing Content

Principle 9: High Value vs. Low Value Content

Principle 10: The Make vs. Buy Decision

With these principles in hand, and a good dose of common sense, I want to broach the important topic of System Conversion.

System Conversion: A change in method or process of accomplishing work or doing business.

Examples of this are changing: 

• operating systems - e.g. Windows vs. MacOS
• internet service providers - e.g. ATT vs. Cricket
• communications providers - Comcast vs DirectTV
• changing email programs - Outlook v.s gmail
• hardware platforms - Dell vs. Apple
• search platforms - Google vs. Bing

More specifically let's say you are unhappy with your email service provider - I myself  want to change service providers, but there is a time and monetary cost to doing so. When I use the word cost, I am referring to  time, space, and money (energy).

It is essential to calculate the cost for two possible scenarios:

1) The cost of continuing to do things as you currently do them.

2) The cost of doing the same thing a different way.

There is an additional cost:

3) The cost of doing the conversion itself.

To make matters worse, there is a fourth, hidden cost.

4) The cost of maintaining two systems while you transition from the pre-conversion system to the post-conversion system.

Doing something a different way does not mean doing it a new way - but it should always mean doing it a better way.

If you calculate these costs, before you perform a system conversion, you are more likely to make a good decision.

Consider the cost of an email system conversion. I am unhappy with Outlook.com because it takes a full thirty minutes to receive a new email message. When I am "cooking" I operate on a considerably shorter time frame than 30 minutes. Even 30 seconds when I am thinking about something can seem like an unproductive eternity.

I used to run Outlook 20XX on Windows YY on my PC ZZ. Then I migrated to Outlook.com as support for Windows was beginning to wane. Now I am almost completely transitioned to Outlook.com and my email is horribly slow. To examine what my options are I visited emailclientmarketshare.com. At this writing the marketshare is this:

I have an archive of 52,000+ emails reaching a back to 1996. So storage space is an issue, as are stability, longevity and ease of converting yet again.

My wife taught me a shopping trick. When she sees a set of similar products in an aisle and one of the products is nearly sold out, she buys THAT product. It is sort of a reddit, "wisdom-of-the-hive" approach. But that trick won't work here because there are more considerations than just the client.

After counting my costs the lowest cost is for me to continue what I am doing and letting Outlook 20XX coexist with Outlook.com. But I am simultaneously transitioning to the MacBook Pro as a backup platform which gives me portability. After as season it may become much easier to perform the email System Conversion.