Deploying Windows 7

Download the Output Report from this Corporate IT Forum workshop attended by 21 delegates representing 16 organisations.  Represented industries include automotive, education, government, healthcare, international food group, pharmaceuticals, recruitment, retail, transport and utilities.

Almost half of the organisations participating in the workshop are already deploying Windows 7; the remainder are leading up to this stage. Deployment can take several years across a large estate, and it is necessary to allow at least a year for testing and to get everything right. In order to catch the 2014 deadline, organisations need to be on top of the challenges and prepared for all the application rationalisation, testing and training involved in a roll out.

Has there been a major shift to Windows 7 in the enterprise as the press has hyped or is there still a corporate place for Windows XP (out of mainstream support since 2009 and due to fall out of extended support in 2014)?

19% of the global IT workforce are expected to be using Windows 7 by the end of 2010, but towards the end of 2011 Corporate IT Professionals can now evaluate whether Windows 7 has lived up to all of the hype and discuss the challenges encountered in their real-world enterprise deployments. Microsoft's warranty costs contribute towards a massive driver to get off an unsupported platform, as will any essential enterprise tools that will only run on Windows 7.

With many new features and benefits sold to the business, this workshop presented a platform for early adopters to highlight features that won't work in certain enterprise environments, and identify potential pitfalls, issues relating to virtualisation, compatibility and user engagement.