Accountancy and business services firm,Baker
Tillywas highlighted last week in an open
letter fromSteve Ballmeron why businesses should
upgrade to Windows 7.
The company has deployed 2,500 desktop PCs in a live production
environment with Windows 7 beta code, through the Microsoft early
adopter programme. Unlike some Microsoft references, Baker Tilly
has not gone through the normal Microsoft
upgrade path from XP to Vista to Windows 7.
It skipped Vista and went straight to Windows 7.
David Hilland, deputy IT director at Baker Tilly said the
company needed to join the early adopter programme out of
necessity. "Windows XP was getting long in the tooth and
Vista was not good for an enterprise with 2,000 plus
users."
David Hilland said Windows 7 improves on group policy controls,
which were lacking in Vista. These make it easier for the IT
department to manage enterprise security. It also makes it possible
for the IT department to set up automatic operating system
maintenance. This keeps desktop hardware running efficiently.
Like many businesses, Baker Tilly needed to run application
compatibility testing to ensure XP applications were available or
could be ported to Windows 7. This took four months.
Now just one application is not available on the company's
Windows 7 desktop infrastructure. "For this one application, which
affects 2% of our users, we look at the Windows XP virtualisation
software Microsoft provides for Windows 7," said Hilland. This lets
users use a virtual machine on Windows 7 to access XP
applications.
The performance boost Windows 7 has given his older PCs is
perhaps the most surprising benefit for Hilland. "Windows 7 is much
better at its job [as an operating system] than Vista. We have had
feedback from 400 users who say their machines are running much
faster under Windows 7, compared to XP." This has meant that
PCs that were three years old and due for replacement can be used
for another 12 months with Windows 7, Hilland said.
Baker Tilly is also assessing Windows Server 2008 R2. "We are at
an early stage and looking at the branch cache feature," Hilland
said. This allows a business to keep track of data stored on local
hard discs on desktop PCs. The local files become part of the
company intranet, which helps with regulatory compliance.