As part of an effort to improve services, the City of Cape Town is adopting key, up-to-date Microsoft infrastructure software, which includes upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 Enterprise 64-bit. Using a combination of dedicated and temporary resources, the city deployed the operating system to 11,640 computers—97 percent of its PCs—in 18 months. Now the city is simplifying IT management, and employees are enjoying faster system performance, especially in branch offices.

Business Needs
The people of Cape Town depend on their city government to manage everything from tourism and transportation to air quality and electricity. The city’s IT department has always sought to provide city staff and councillors with the best IT tools available to promote high quality municipal services.

As part of this mission, the IT department has moved in recent years toward standardizing on Microsoft software and technologies in key infrastructure areas. For example, in October 2009, the department produced an Architecture Position Paper advocating an organizationwide upgrade to a single and up-to-date Windows client operating environment for several reasons. The city has 12,020 PCs in its environment.

First, the city needed to reduce its reliance on the Windows XP operating system because Microsoft technical support for software would be ending. With an upgrade to the latest version of Windows, the city could look forward to five years of technical support from the product’s general availability date, plus a further five years of extended support for organizations. Second, the city wanted to standardize on one operating system version to streamline and simplify IT management, which would result in more efficient use of IT labor resources. Third, the city wanted to take advantage of newer technologies to improve system performance and employee efficiency, particularly for branch offices.

Solution
To achieve its goals, in February 2010, the City of Cape Town began to deploy the Windows 7 Enterprise operating system as part of a broader plan to upgrade the IT environment. A key objective was to upgrade as many computers as possible during this period, with a minimum target of 3,800 PCs. The city was prepared for the timeline to be a challenge because the IT department’s Distributed Computing division, which was responsible for implementation, needed to coordinate a combination of dedicated and temporary project resources.

Employees report a vast performance improvement [with Windows 7 Enterprise], resulting in an improved user experience. Shuaib Parker Infrastructure Architect, City of Cape Town

Further complicating the project were several other initiatives occurring in the same general timeframe. A rollout of Microsoft Office Professional 2010 began in April 2010, although it was delayed while the city waited for a software update from SAP that would resolve compatibility issues with SAP GUI 7.20. Also, a deployment of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 was started to provide users with larger mailboxes and enhanced unified communications capabilities. Additionally, Hyper-V virtualization technology was implemented on 115 host servers in several branch offices, providing a total of 460 virtual servers, to maximize hardware resources.

Despite multiple challenges, the city was able to test Windows 7, verify application compatibility, and deploy on schedule. To help achieve this success, the city took advantage of the Operating System Deployment feature in Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007. Additionally, the city did not require any special tools or development effort to make its applications compatible with the Windows Internet Explorer 8 web browser.

As of September 2011, the city had installed Windows 7 on 11,640 computers—far exceeding the original target of 3,800. The city anticipates full deployment to all 12,020 PCs soon.

Benefits
By deploying the latest operating system as part of a broad initiative to upgrade and standardize its IT environment, the City of Cape Town boosted PC performance and improved the user experience. The upgrade complements other strategic IT initiatives, while helping to lower costs and simplify management.

Boosts Performance, Improves User Experience
The city has noticed performance improvements on upgraded computers, including faster search results. One Windows 7 feature that particularly interested the city was BranchCache, in which content from the city’s network file and web servers is cached on local computers at branch offices to improve application response time and reduce network traffic. Now users are able to access information quicker and open documents and webpages faster, which increases productivity.

“Employees report a vast performance improvement, resulting in an improved user experience,” says Shuaib Parker, Infrastructure Architect for the City of Cape Town.

Supports Other Strategic IT Initiatives
The operating system upgrade complements the city’s strategy to standardize on Microsoft software in key areas such as productivity, communications, and collaboration. For example, while Microsoft Office 2010 works with many versions of Windows, several innovations in Windows 7 are seamlessly integrated with Office 2010 to help employees work more efficiently.

Thanks to easier document search with Windows 7, the city also expects employees will make better use of its existing Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 deployment, which the city uses for intranet, internet, and document management.

For the near future, the city is looking at upgrading to SharePoint Server 2010, with its tight interoperability with Office 2010, to further improve collaboration and information access. With SharePoint Server 2010 functionality, branch offices will be able to access and manage information more quickly and easily.

Simplifies IT Management, Lowers Costs
The Windows 7 deployment project had ambitious timelines and targets, but it delivered on all the city’s objectives. All new computers will run Windows 7 as part of the standardized IT environment. This consistent environment will decrease administration costs and free up time for IT staff to work on projects that help the city with its critical mission of providing high-quality local services.

For more information about Windows 7, go to:
www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7