Asset Management Suite

My organization is considering upgrading from version 6 to version 7 for all of our Altiris products.  We currently are using Client Mangement Suite, Asset management, Barcode solution, and a few other solutions.  Anybody have any suggestions on what your company has done if you upgraded or why you chose not to upgrade if you have not upgraded.

We are also considering purchasing ServiceDesk 7.0.  Any thought on ServiceDesk?  Can it be installed in a virtual environment?

Thanks for the help.  I have to put together a recommendation by next Wednesday (4/21). 

We've not yet upgraded, but I've done some heavy evaluation of Asset 7 and NS 7. 

After attending Vision I'd suggest investigating and preparing to migrate after Symantec Management Platform 7.1 (formerly NS) is released.
I would also seriously consider Asset 7 at this time as well.

On the topic of Service Desk 7 I would tottally recommend it.  It's a really cool solution and if you already own Asset the solutions are integrated with some very cool workflows that could be super useful in many environments.  It can run on a Virtual environment, but I wouldn't recommend it due to the memory requirements, but it can run in there.

any indication on when SMP 7.1 will be released.

and numerous posts discussing it. I believe it is planned for late Q3 or early Q4 (at least for CMS). Haven't even heard an inkling for AMS, as releases for AMS usually lags behind those for CMS.

ITMS 7.1 is scheduled for Q4 2010.  It will include CMS, SMS, AMS, and DS (as well as SMP 7.1).  The individual suites will no longer have separate major releases.  Additionally, ITMS maintenance packs will now be released quarterly.  Each solution (Inventory, Patch, SWD) still has the ability to release bug fixes through the KB system as needed.

ServiceDesk for the time being will maintain a separate release schedule; however, I'm sure we will see that more closely aligning to the ITMS release schedule in the future.

Is your company currently using version 7?  If so, how did the migration go and which products are you using?  

Does your company do migrations for Altiris products ( I am trying not to assume anything)?  If so, how many migrations have you done from v6 to 7 and how did they go?  About how long does it take on average?

As an Altiris customer, not as a consultant, would you recommend purchasing consulting to upgrade CMS, SMS, and SAMS? and to implement ServiceDesk?

@Andrew:

I know that this might be a difficult question to answer, but here goes anyway...

If you had to give a number on the percentage of customers that have upgraded from v6 to v7, what kind of numbers would we be looking at?  Not trying to nail anyone down on this...just looking for some rough numbers to prove that we are not early adopters to executive management.

The general answer that I have gotten is that there has been a large jump in interest now that AMS 7 has been released and that numbers may be higher real soon than they otherwise would have been.

I wouldn't say anyone choosing to upgrade now would be an early adopter. 
Just from interactions with others here in Kansas City and on Connect I'd estimate it may be as high as 50%

That could be partially because people who are more involved in the communities are more likely to upgrade, but maybe not. 
I don't have any real figures like maybe an official at symantec might have, but in my experience this should be about right.