April 3, 2009

I cant wait for Windows 7

Posted by Elliot Lawrence under Windows 7 | Tags: , , , , , , |
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I am very excited by the release of Windows 7  from a personal perspective and a business perspective. It can’t come too soon in my opinion.

I have been running Windows 7 Beta on my primary business laptop since the download was available. I was fearful that this was going to be another “pigs ear” of an OS like Vista. Now I am one of those people who has persevered with Vista and the experience improved over time; once I turned off the annoying features and found my way round the interface so I could do things my way.

I have met very few people (I can count them on one hand) who actually like Vista and there was good reason for this opinion. It was slow, the interface though pretty initially, was all over the shop, they had moved everything for no good reason and file access was tiresome. That was without talking about the User Account Control and plenty of other annoyances. I found people to be aggressively negative about the product in fact.

So here are a few reasons to get excited:

  • Since running Windows 7 I have found that the OS is super fast, even on old hardware with 512MB of RAM – I was really impressed
  • The interface has been tightened up and greatly improved and I find it much easy to achieve tasks and just get around
  • The product fits together much better overall, just like XP does and support for devices and software is great (the ones I use)
  • It is good looking and you wont be quite as envious of the Mac user sitting next to you in Starbucks

From a business point of view, this is the release that Vista should have been, and I don’t think there is any reason not to adopt it quickly. There will be a learning curve for users as the interface is significantly different to XP and at the back end if you are deploying it and managing it using Active Directory and group policies the features and items you can control centrally just keeps growing, which is good of course but means more effort to tune it to your particular needs. Still out of the box it is far more secure, stable and complete.

Being in the business of helping companies deploy technology and in particular Microsoft infrastructure , I have felt a large hole in my business because I havent come across anyone who wanted to roll the product out. I know some companies have, but I feel they are few and far between. I have a 1000 seat plus financial services customer who is about to roll out Windows XP for the third time. The last two roll outs have been whilst Vista has been available! They have chosen to do a new OS software refresh with everything but the OS being refreshed!

I am sure we are not the only IT services company missing out on these projects, before it felt like a conveyor belt that always turned on time, Windows 95/ 3.11 to NT4, NT4 to Windows 2000, Windows 2000 to XP and then it all stopped.

With the current economic crisis still taking it’s toll, businesses starting to perform hardware and software rerfreshes to their user base would be great for everyone concerned and that is why Windows 7 cant come soon enough.

I will be talking about particular Windows 7  features in future entries.

 

March 17, 2009

6 Ways to Cut IT Costs – Automated Desktop Infrastructure

Posted by Elliot Lawrence under 6 Ways to Cut IT Costs, Automated Deployment | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |
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6 Ways to Cut IT Costs …

Part 3 - Automated Desktop and Applications

A disproportionate amount of time is spent by technical staff, end users and management in making sure that applications are installed on PCs where a user is going to work, in additional to providing a stable operating system for those applications to reside on.

Implementing an infrastructure with automated desktop builds and applications that install wherever the user goes will dramatically cut the amount of time spent by all parties, but especially IT staff, in keeping the show going. End user productivity can be measurably enhanced when you take away the frustration of getting the tools they need and fighting with the system.

Most businesses don’t realize that Microsoft ships all the tools you need to “hands free” install Windows and any application. Sure you can buy Systems Center Configuration Manager or a third party product too, but all you need, especially in a small and medium business (10 to 1000 seats) environment is included.

What’s the Deal?

A scenario: a new user joins your organization (yes this must be a public sector example!), you un-box their PC that meets the corporate standard, plug it into the network, power on and hit a few keys. Shortly afterward you have a pristine operating system installed with all the base configuration, core applications and security settings deployed and applied. The new user sits in front of the PC, signs in for the first time and immediately the 3 specific applications they require are installed in a few minutes. Finally, the system is automatically patched for the latest security holes.

If the user then has to use a PC over the other side of the building for a week, they can sign in at that PC and once again the users applications will install instantly for them and their environment will be exactly as they expect.

Finally, if the user encounters a problem with the system, you can simply pick up the old system, swap in a pre-built one, and have the user log in.

What Do I Need?

So how do you achieve all this.

Well firstly it has been possible since the NT4 days – give or take a few items. Some of the components and tools have been renamed (some many times),some have been improved, expanded and gained sophistication, they have even given you a multitude of ways to do the same thing, but bottom line you can have a fully automated (that reacts to new hardware and devices), centrally controlled, standardized desktop infrastructure out of the box. No extra costs, no extra software and this is just the tip of the iceberg of whats available FOC.

Here’s what you need:

  1. Windows Server (2008 preferably)
  2. Windows XP (or Vista or Windows 7)
  3. Active Directory (included with Windows Server)
  4. Group Policy (included with Active Directory)

That’s it. Now, you can add to this, embellish, but this solution will scale to many sites and many thousands of users, desktops and applications.

At this point people will stop me and say, yes but we use Ghost and it only cost $70 to do the whole company. My usual answer to this is twofold, Yes, Ghost is great the first few times for automating a build. It is very fast and when you only have one to two types of PC it is easy to manage, however once you have multiple hardware types, multiple configuration standards then Ghost loses it’s appeal quickly. More importantly though, Ghost rightly has to be licensed per system managed and one retail copy supporting 500 users is actually breaking the law.

Anyway, you will already have all the items on my list , even if you are a Small Business Server operation.

Remind Me of The Benefits?

Ok, so by doing this kind of infrastructure you can ensure that users have the applications they need wherever they go, always installed in the prescribed way with no deltas. You can ensure that, all PCs are built and maintained to corporate standards for usage, approved applications, system lock downs, security policies and all this without ever having to get out of your seat.

The savings flow through also in greatly reduced support calls and desk side visits. This means you can re-deploy helpdesk staff and minimize the waste of your user’s time – which over a year adds up to significant numbers.

We have seen 40% drops in overall logged calls when this is applied and it is viable for any size business – though once you scale, you will definitely want to consider further tools or systems that address particular enterprise requirements.

The Same Only Different

Over the years I have seen organizations avoid dealing with a proper managed desktop infrastructure by going down solution routes that have been totally inappropriate and horrendously expensive and eventually deemed a failure, when they had the tools and proven methodologies to make this work. In the past, Terminal Server / Citrix was the solution du jour for avoiding the problem of delivering a managed desktop, all it did was move the issues to the data center but you still had the desktops out there essentially un-managed, and I see the Virtual Desktop Infrastructure is trying to become the new flavor. Beware! See a future blog on this topic.

For more information on this, please see my web site for the expanded version of this topic (www.squeezetech.com).

 

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