A Smooth Migration to Windows 7
What many of us do not realise is that although Windows XP has served us well, it is now over 8 years old. With most organisations completely side stepping Vista due to various reasons such as sluggish performance or software incompatibilities, Microsoft have worked very hard and succeeded in producing a viable upgrade for XP in Windows 7.
We have been talking to a lot of customers over the past few months who intend to upgrade to Windows 7 and the three most common ‘concerns’ they have are as follows:
- Being able to image machines on the fly using PXE technology is great but keeping these images up to date and in line with the different hardware we currently have and will purchase in the future is tedious, time consuming and very labour intensive.
- Upgrading from Windows XP should be beneficial. However, our users are quite protective of their personalised machines and still need their shortcuts, wallpaper etc.
- Windows 7 does indeed look quick, well finished and complete. However, we have many custom written applications that either require Internet Explorer 6 (Yes, they are still out there!) or other legacy components that will not function with this new OS.
As you would expect from us, we have been looking for ways to make the migration to Windows 7 easier for our clients and have built up, in this short space of time, considerable expertise within b2Lateral on how to tackle such issues. One of the solutions we have focused on is Novell’s Endpoint Management Solutions and in particular their ZENworks Configuration Management (ZCM) product and the way it can help to guide and deliver the entire migration, enabling it to be completed as efficiently and effectively as possible.
So let us have a look at each of these concerns in detail:
Imaging: Technology to create and deploy images has been around for many years but what differentiates the b2Lateral approach from the
rest of the crowd is that with the help of ZCM we are able to develop a solution that consists of a single image that is hardware independent.
As new hardware types, whether laptops or desktops are purchased by an organisation, our modular method means that you will still be working
with one image across the entire estate. This produces significant savings in terms of time and resource in having to manage and update many
images. In addition to this, ZCM has the ability to deploy images to central or remote offices, providing you with a truly scalable and
enterprise-wide solution.
Personality Migration: Just like us, computers have a personality! It is all very nice being able to deploy a consistent workstation operating system image to all your machines in the organisation. However, once an image is deployed and the workstation is up and running, your users will inevitably require their own customisation. Typical personalised settings that a user needs from their previous build are their desktop wallpaper, email account settings, browser favourites, Microsoft Office macros etc. How often has a workstation been rebuilt and we have forgotten to take a backup of Microsoft Office macros? Well as part of any workstation migration, ZCM is capable of backing up these settings and many more from Windows XP and then restoring them onto a new Windows 7 build. This not only reduces user downtime, it also makes the whole migration process far less painful for both the user and you.
Applications: So we have our new operating system, we have our personality, will our applications work? Well, of course many well known applications are already certified to work with Windows 7 and if they are not, Windows 7 has many compatibility features built-in to help older applications work. However what about those web applications which still only function correctly in Internet Explorer 6; how do we cater for these? The answer is Novell’s ZENworks Application Virtualisation (ZAV) solution. But, will this not mean we will need a complete Virtual Application solution with backend servers and another project, I hear you ask? Not at all; Novell has developed a gem of a solution to package and deploy legacy applications such as Internet Explorer 6 to any operating system and because these virtual applications do not in any way install or alter the operating system, you can have Internet Explorer 6 running side by side with Internet Explorer 7 or 8 on the same workstation at the same time!
So if you are looking to migrate to Windows 7 in 2010, which I am sure you are, I am sure it is worthwhile talking to b2Lateral and exploring how we can help and the merits of using ZCM or ZAV to make your life easier. You can contact us by calling Derrick Hall on 0844 664 2565 or email Derrick at dhall@b2lateral.net