EnvisionConnect is almost ready—Are you?

Extensive Early Adopter studies have been done on the percentage of people who immediately adopt new technologies and those who do not. Before August 1, 2007, EnvisionConnect will have enough base functionality in place to allow approximately 90% of Envision's customers to migrate.

The question is: how many will do so in 2007, and how many will procrastinate?

Everett Rogers' now famous study described a diffusion of innovation within a technology adoption lifecycle. In layman's terms, specific percentages of people will adopt new technologies at specific rates. Those rates are illustrated below.

If these studies hold true, 2.5% of our Envision users and new customers will be seen as Innovators and begin using EnvisionConnect on the earliest schedule possible. Early Adopters will then climb on board numbering 13.5%. Then come the Early and Late Majorities—each being a whopping 34% of our users, and finally the Laggards will make-up the final 16%.

I meet routinely with our beta-test group—ironically, they are labeled the EnvisionConnect Early Adopters. It is fair to say that 50% of the group has never participated in the first meeting. About a third of the group has been actively testing the product in the field, and a small percentage is actively using the product in production. If these numbers are any indication, the migration percentages beyond August will prove very comparable to Rogers' findings.

Now, I'm wondering how long a time period the Bell curve above represents. If the far left represents September of 2006—when the first customer went live with EnvisionConnect—What date is represented by the far right? When will the last Envision for Windows customer migrate to EnvisionConnect?

I've been optimistic that this date will be no later than the end of 2008—but that was before someone reminded me that one government agency is still regularly using Envision for Dos. I guess Rogers' study never accounted for the if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it crowd.