"Using a conservative estimate of saving two hours per week for each of our 10 sales and support staff that are constantly searching for data, we'll save 1,000 of man hours per year."

Maxima Ireland is an application and solutions provider based in Dublin, Ireland. The company wanted to upgrade to the Windows 7 operating system to gain hands-on knowledge to better serve its customers. By adopting technology early, the company is able to pass along lessons learned and IT value. Maxima Ireland already benefits from enhanced security, increased productivity, and improved ability to help customers.

Situation

Maxima Ireland, a division of Maxima group PLC, is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner specializing in virtualization, access and core infrastructure, security, and software provisioning. Founded in 1987, the company is now one of the fastest growing application and solution providers in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Maxima Ireland has 32 employees-10 office-based employees who use desktop computers, and 22 engineers who work remotely from customer locations with portable computers. The company has a heterogeneous IT environment, running the Windows XP operating system, the Windows Vista operating system, and several Citrix clients. Its server environment is composed of Citrix XenServer with a Windows Server 2003 Active Directory service domain.

As an IT solutions provider, Maxima Ireland adopts new technology as it becomes available in order to gain first-hand knowledge and expertise that it can then pass on to its customers to help them maximize IT investments. When Windows 7 Beta was released, Maxima Ireland knew that it wanted to start evaluating the operating system for its own use, and for customers who want to upgrade. "We really wanted to implement Windows 7 internally so that we could help customers get the most out of the operating system and deliver maximum benefit-this is one of our primary goals," says Mark O'Connor, Technical Lead for Managed Services at Maxima Ireland.

Specifically, Maxima Ireland wanted to explore the new search capabilities Windows 7 to enable employees to access information easily. The company uses a group file share for its data, such as project information, and with thousands of files and more than 1 Terabyte (TB) of data, retrieving documents was time consuming. Maxima Ireland also wanted to explore security enhancements which are a top priority for its customers.

Solution

Maxima Ireland started its internal deployment by upgrading 5 of its 32 computers in March 2009. For its initial deployment, it installed Windows 7 Beta from DVDs on existing hardware. Maxima Ireland upgraded both portable computers and desktops that were previously running Windows Vista or Windows XP. In one example, a computer that was previously running Windows XP had a lower memory specification than other computers in the company's fleet: 512 megabytes of RAM. "I wanted to see how well Windows 7 ran on a computer with low memory specs," explains Brendan Matthews, Operations Manager at Maxima Ireland. "We decided to use that as a benchmark, running multiple instances of Microsoft Office, VPN, and remote Citrix applications. I was surprised with the excellent performance. It ran as well as computers with significantly more memory."

As part of its Windows 7 deployment, Maxima Ireland will decommission some of its older productivity and line-of-business applications that it is running on a Citrix farm and instead use Microsoft applications as part of its Windows 7 operating system image. For instance, the company plans to install the Microsoft Office Visio 2007 drawing and diagramming software to the desktop, rather than running MindManager diagramming software from its Citrix farm. In addition, Maxima Ireland is planning on upgrading its domain to Windows Server 2008 Active Directory.

Maxima Ireland is evaluating BitLocker To Go and AppLocker features in Windows 7 for enhanced security. "We currently use third-party products for some of our security solutions and we're looking forward to taking advantage of secure, out-of-the-box functionality," explains Stephen Black, Operations Director at Maxima Ireland.

The company will roll out Windows 7 to all of its employees by July 2009. In the spirit of demonstrating its competency in various technologies and running a heterogeneous IT environment, and to showcase the versatility of Windows 7 with other platforms, Maxima Ireland will use Citrix XenServer to provision desktops to its users.

Using a conservative estimate of saving two hours per week for each of our 10 sales and support staff that are constantly searching for data, we’ll save 1,000 of man hours per year. Brendan Matthews, Operations Manager, Maxima Ireland

Benefits

Although it's still early in the deployment process, Maxima Ireland already sees the benefits of upgrading to Windows 7. The company will be able to enhance security and increase employee productivity-all while building the expertise it needs to deliver value to its customers.

Enhanced security

With BitLocker To Go, Maxima Ireland will be able to extend encryption beyond the hard disk to removable media, such as USB thumb drives. This helps to ensure that company data and critical customer information is safeguarded in the event portable storage is lost or stolen. In addition, by implementing AppLocker, the company will be able to block users from downloading malicious software.

In addition, as a result of using out-of-the-box security enhancements, the company will be able to eliminate other third-party security products, resulting in a savings of U.S 5,000 in product cost, annual soft-ware maintenance charges and support time "Most importantly, we'll be able to offer customers the same cost savings," says Black.

Increased employee productivity

With the improved file system in Windows 7, employees will be able to search the corporate file shares for critical information and see results more quickly. Searches that previously took an hour are now almost instantaneous. "Users see relevant results as they type," explains Matthews. "Using a conservative estimate of saving two hours per week for each of our 10 sales and support staff that are constantly searching for data, we'll save 1,000 of man hours per year, representing an approximate productivity cost savings of U.S.25,000."

Improved ability to help customers

As a result of implementing Windows 7 during its beta release, Maxima Ireland is able to gain expertise using the operating system prior to implementing it for customers. The company can evaluate features in Windows 7 and take the lessons-learned from its own internal deployment and pass along those key learnings and business value to customers.

For More Information

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© 2007 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published May 2009