PC Migration Work Group To Improve Upgrades From Old PCs To New PCs

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Sept. 4, 2002 -- Intel Corporation, Altiris, Detto Technologies, Eisenworld, IBM, Laplink, Microsoft Corporation, Miramar Systems, Symantec and Tranxition today announced the formation of the PC Migration Work Group, an industry working group that will focus on improving the migration of end-user data and custom settings from old PCs to new PCs. This is expected to make upgrading PCs -- both corporate and consumer -- faster, easier and less stressful.

"As PC markets continue to grow, we are reaching a point where many of the computers sold are replacement PCs," said Alec Gefrides, Intel's Ease of Use initiative manager and chairman of the PC Migration Work Group. "The large increases of personal digital content on existing PC and the critical nature of that information, have made transferring to a new PC a daunting task."

The working group hopes to ensure that an easy migration path becomes a fundamental part of the PC replacement process. Currently, it can take days or even months to get a new PC set up with the data, e-mail, contacts, bookmarks and personal settings from a user's old computer. In addition to keeping that migration timeframe as brief as possible, the working group will help raise awareness of modern migration solutions now available.

The breadth of the working group goes beyond the consumer market to include Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), a measure of how much it costs to purchase, maintain and upgrade computers in corporate environments.

Industry analyst firm Gartner Group estimates that the average savings from implementing a migration solution into a corporate environment is $250 per computer. Gartner believes that PC migration is one of the best opportunities for corporate IT shops to reduce their TCO as it pertains to the desktop and that return on investment has a high payback.**

"Intel effectively reduced the amount of time it took to migrate data and user preferences to a new computer," said John N. Johnson, Intel technology director and general manager. "Utilizing a migration solution saves Intel money on a wide range of costs, including end-user down time, technician time and time lost while end users restore their customized views and applications."

The working group's initial focus is to raise awareness and acceptance of today's migration solutions and create guidelines for independent software vendors (ISVs) to make user environments easily migratable. Longer-term, the working group will focus on creating tools and processes for making the migration experience seamless and part of a new computer's out-of-the-box experience.

For more information about the PC Migration Work Group, please visit www.pc-migration-wg.com.

Intel is a trademark or registered trademark of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.

* Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.