Windows 7 adopter discusses using client management software from CA to streamline the migration to Microsoft's most recent operating system -- twice.
IT manager adopting Windows 7 details the migration process, using tools from IT management software vendor CA.
Migrating desktops to a new operating system typically can be challenging at best and a disaster at worst. Compatibility, personalization and other issues plague the process of updating an operating system while also moving end-user settings and client applications. Microsoft’s Windows 7 is taking off among IT managers, and in many cases, client management software is helping drive smoother migrations with streamlined processes.
Essential guide to Windows 7 management
David Hilland, deputy director of IT at Baker Tilly International, a network of accounting and business advisory firms, describes his company experience with Windows 7 as pre-early adopter. Working under extreme non-disclosure agreement, Hilland had the opportunity to work with a release candidate of the operating system in June 2009. With 2,400 desktops to migrate, Hilland reported the first migration from a “quite long-in-the-tooth” XP required about four weeks of his IT department’s times. The second migration, one from Windows 7 to Windows 7, took two and a half weeks, and Hilland credits CA technology with the shortened project time.
“We have used CA products for 10 years or longer, and the savings in time that we make doing things with their technologies have long been absorbed by us as an organization,” Hilland says. “It took us four weeks to rebuild all the desktops in the enterprise, a process which could have taken six months. And we almost halved that process with the Windows 7 to Windows 7 migration. That is quantifiable.”
Hilland employed CA IT Client Manager and CA Desktop Migration Manager, to which the vendor added support for the deployment and management of Windows 7. The vendor says its IT Client Manager software streamlined customer transitions to Windows 7, lowering the overall cost of migrating machines.
“There are a number of ways of doing a migration, you can even use tools in the Microsoft application, but all options are certainly not strong enough to migrate large numbers without impacting our end users,” Hilland says. “It is difficult to find something that works in every single occurrence, but if you hit 80% that can work. We found heavy standardization using CA products, and if the desktop is a fit for 100 or 150 in the environment, then we could count on it being a fit for the entire enterprise.”
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