Business Desktop Deployment 2007 includes two solutions to streamline deployments: the Zero Touch solution, which requires System Management Server (SMS), and the Lite Touch solution, which does not.
Bruce Hoard
The Sierra Nevada Brewing Company is renowned for its full-bodied pale ale, but when it opted to become an early adopter of the Windows Vista operating system, it decided to go with the "Lite Touch." That's one of two options for streamlining deployments of Windows Vista with the Microsoft Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment 2007 (BDD).
Sierra Nevada utilized the assistance of Microsoft's Technology Adoption Program to join the prerelease of Windows Vista last year, according to IT manager Justin Ainsworth. The Technology Adoption Program for Windows Vista includes live support, biweekly conference calls, and other materials. The Chico, California-based company believed that upgrading from Windows XP would make it easier for employees to find relevant product-testing data and other documentation, as well as improve data security to minimize risks of laptop computer loss and theft, and reduce vulnerabilities associated with inappropriate user account access and phishing. In addition, it wanted to ease the burden on IT resources with regard to end-user permissions and system deployment.
Options to streamline deployment
Through the Technology Adoption Program, Ainsworth took advantage of BDD, which comprises comprehensive guidance, best practices, and tools that organizations can use to deploy Windows Vista and the 2007 Office system to desktops. BDD includes two solutions to streamline deployments: the Zero Touch solution, which requires System Management Server (SMS), and the Lite Touch solution, which does not.
Ainsworth selected the Lite Touch option because it is designed for environments with 25 PCs or more and is not reliant on SMS to manage the targeted workstations. BDD quickly replaces the legacy operating system—which at Sierra Nevada is typically Microsoft Windows XP—with Windows Vista. "It's very simple," says Ainsworth, who has upgraded about 50 Dell workstations so far. "From start to finish it takes about 20 minutes. You can go to lunch, and when you come back, you have Vista.
"Lite Touch basically involves an IT person going to a workstation and forcing the computer to boot over to the network, which activates the Windows Vista deployment server and initiates the Lite Touch deployment, and from that point on—I think it's two mouse clicks—that's all that's necessary to wipe the computer, load it with Vista, and get it set up for our standard configuration for a desktop," Ainsworth explains. By comparison, upgrading to Microsoft Windows XP was much more hands-on and time-consuming, he says, requiring an IT person to pop a CD into each new PC, come back 30 minutes later, check for errors, and make any necessary adjustments.
Sierra Nevada's IT manager, Justin Ainsworth, says employees are clamoring for IT to upgrade the other 100 or so workstations.
Bruce Hoard
Through careful planning and testing of the core applications installed in each desktop, Ainsworth discovered he had two applications that would not run on Windows Vista. The first was a 10-year-old custom-developed program that was at the end of its utility cycle anyway, and the second was a newer program that he and the other half of his two-person IT department—who is a Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator—are working on. He expects the issue to be resolved soon, allowing full implementation of Windows Vista to be completed this summer.
Although Windows Vista is being deployed in a manufacturing environment at Sierra Nevada, it is garnering raves for its prowess with business applications such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. Specifically, employees say they enjoy being able to quickly search files that pertain to manufacturing processes and access every document they need in seconds, as opposed to searching from one directory to another.
Ainsworth says employees are clamoring for IT to upgrade the other 100 or so workstations. "A lot of people ask why this hasn't been deployed to them yet," he says. "People are excited to see it, and those who have used it don't want to go back to their XP machines."
In the meantime, Ainsworth says the deployment options for Windows Vista seem custom-made for his SMB environment. "There's a lot of benefit to being able to reimage a workstation when there's an issue," he says. "Being able to get a machine back to its previous state within 20 minutes is real handy when there are only two people in your IT shop. You don't need to spend two hours troubleshooting an application program when you can just wipe it out and reload in much less time."
Bruce Hoard is a Bangor, Maine-based freelance contributor to Momentum, the midsize business center newsletter.
