FrontRange Solutions, the developer of client life cycle and IT infrastructure management software, today warns organisations not to underestimate the preparation required to migrate to Windows 7.
Although many firms are not expecting to implement the new operating system before 2010/11, FrontRange Solutions still urges these businesses to start the planning process as soon as possible to avoid potential unnecessary delays and costs.
“It's tempting to think that because the business is not upgrading to Windows 7 for at least a year, it's not something to worry about today,” says Nick Perkings, sales director at FrontRange Solutions, South Africa. “However, with analysts such as Gartner stating that most organisations will need at least 12-18 months to prepare, businesses need to start planning their rollout now, otherwise they will face costly delays.”
A major concern is the legacy infrastructure, which can cause critical compatibility issues due to its age and resulting complexity and results in the need for automatic methods to migrate and manage an operating system. At a time of reduced IT headcount, and increased pressure to reduce costs, many businesses can be unprepared for this bottleneck and unsure of how to proceed.
“Businesses can understandably feel overwhelmed when planning what is likely to be the single largest IT project of recent years,” says Perkins. “However, tools are readily available that can quickly, easily and reliably automate the entire process, reducing the operating costs of the infrastructure as well as the burden on the IT department dramatically.”
FrontRange Solutions recommends organisations prepare for Windows 7 rollout in four key stages:
1. Planning - building a team of stakeholders, with executive sponsorship, who will own the process of scoping and managing the rollout project.
2. Discovery - vital to completing any rollout on time and on budget is the ability to see exactly what IT assets (both hardware and software) are already on the corporate network. Audit information provided by tools such as FrontRange Discovery, can then be used to determine new hardware requirements and potential compatibility issues.
3. Deployment - rolling out any new software across the entire network is a major undertaking, let alone upgrading to a new operating system. FrontRange Solutions recommends using automated deployment tools such as the FrontRange Client Management Suite to accelerate the process of packaging, testing and deploying the OS to target machines across the enterprise.
4. Management - as with any new software, post-deployment management is critical to overall success, as it is likely that patches and hotfixes will need to be deployed swiftly across the network. It is also important to ensure that PCs remain compliant with established policies (such as software configuration).
To help organisations plan and manage their Windows 7 rollout, FrontRange has developed a four-stage success kit (including the a free copy of the Gartner Paper: “Prepare for Windows 7 in three phases”), which can be downloaded free of charge from http://www.frontrange.com/windows7.
For more information on managing the migration to Windows 7 or any other major IT projects with IT asset management and client life cycle solutions from FrontRange, please visit http://www.frontrange.com.
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FrontRange Solutions
FrontRange Solutions develops software and services that growing mid-size firms and distributed enterprises rely on every day to build great customer relationships and deliver high-quality customer service. The company applies a unique combination of innovation and automation with a standards-based approach to simplify core business processes, including IT service management, customer relationship and sales force management, and infrastructure management. More than 150 000 organisations and some of the world's best-known brands use FrontRange offerings to quickly improve their interactions with external and internal clients and achieve better business results.
For more information, visit http://www.frontrange.com.
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