Windows 7
Customer Solution Case Study
Global Technology Service Provider
Deploys Operating System and Expands
“The new technologies available in Windows 7 are
extremely relevant for information and
communication technology systems. We’re
excited about the features that we can pass
along to our customers.”
Overview
Country or Region: Germany Industry: Professional services Customer Profile
Based in Frankfurt, Germany, and with operations in more than 20 countries, T-Systems is a division of Deutsche Telekom that provides information and communications technology solutions.
Business Situation
With customers ready to migrate to Windows 7, the company needed to bring its operating system up-to-date and improve product offerings. Solution
T-Systems evaluated features and conducted compatibility tests before deploying Windows 7 to 1,150 PCs internally. To help standardize customer migrations, it built the User Relocation Tool.
Benefits
Enhances employee productivity
Streamlines IT workload
Reduces power usage
Expands company innovation
Increases customer satisfaction
A subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, T-Systems provides
end-to-end technology solutions that help enterprise customers
achieve operational efficiencies. With Windows 7 rapidly
gaining traction in the marketplace, the company wanted
to roll out the operating system and retread its service
offerings. As a Microsoft Alliance Partner and Gold
Certified Partner, T-Systems became an early adopter of
Windows 7 Enterprise in 2008 and has deployed the
operating system to 1,150 PCs internally and to 4,200
customer PCs. By using knowledge gained during its
internal deployment, T-Systems developed the User
Relocation Tool to help customers implement Windows 7 in
their own environments. The company benefits internally
from streamlined IT services, increased productivity, and
green IT, while its customers enjoy faster deployment times
Situation
T-Systems delivers information and communications technology systems to multinational corporations and public sector institutions. Some of its largest customers include automotive
companies and financial institutions. In 2009, the company generated revenues of approximately EUR€8.8 billion (U.S.$11.2 billion). T-Systems is a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, one of the world’s major telecommunications and information technology service companies. Deutsche Telekom has more than 131 million mobile customers, more than 37 million fixed-network lines, and more than 16 million broadband lines.
Supported by the Deutsche Telekom global infrastructure of data centers, networks, and telecommunications operations, T-Systems provides services to both internal customers (for
example, its own workforce and its parent company and subsidiaries) and external customers. Its expertise includes end-to-end technology solutions that enable rapid
development, reliable data exchange, state-of-the-art communications systems, efficient wholesale deployments, and so on. “We plan, build, and run IT environments, and we manage technology conversions,” says Torsten Reinhardt, Senior Architect for Core Client Solutions for the Client Engineering Department at T-Systems. “We also serve as an outsourcing partner.”
The competitive advantage of T-Systems is that the company develops standardized processes that can be applied in the environments of many different customers. “We have core solutions for servers, operating systems,
databases, networks, provisioning, catalog management, and more,” says Reinhardt. “The backbone—the underlying technology and architecture—is the same for every customer. By leveraging standard processes, we can offer our products at really low prices with high benefits.” For example, Managed Workplace Services is a standard service package—grouped in three roles including Service, Office, and Traveller—available to T-Systems customers. All three roles are based on the same “core services,” a select set of services for PCs, portable computers, and smartphones. With this solution, a customer can purchase a ready-to-go hardware, software, and service system at a fixed monthly rate, with defined service levels and a single point-of-contact for service issues. T-Systems can customize standard packages to include additional components— named “extensions.” Examples of extensions include Messaging, Collaboration, and Mailbox. T-Systems can integrate a solution module called Service Workplace with existing applications or implement it as a virtualized system.
T-Systems built Managed Workplace Services offerings on the Windows Vista and Windows XP operating systems. To keep ahead of the competition, the company refreshes its offerings twice annually. With Windows XP coming to the end of its support life cycle, and many T-Systems customers getting ready to migrate to Windows 7, the company decided to incorporate Windows 7 into its product line to improve services, replace third-party applications, and reduce costs. “To serve our external customers, T-Systems
“The hard-link
migration feature in
the User State
Migration Tool is the
most important part in
the deployment
process because it
speeds up migration.
With the User State
Migration Tool, we can
reduce an eight-hour
process to an hour.”
needs to increase its expertise with Windows 7,” says Reinhardt, “We want to be ready to deliver Windows 7–ready products.
Altogether, the company manages over 1.5 million PCs worldwide. T-Systems decided it needed to migrate 150,000 internal PCs (one-third of which are portable computers)—including the PCs of its own 45,300 employees plus those of Deutsche Telekom workers—to the operating system. “We want to use state-of-the-art technology because we’re a modern company,” says Reinhardt.
Solution
As a Microsoft Alliance Partner and Gold Certified Partner, T-Systems learned about an opportunity to become an early adopter of the Windows 7 Enterprise operating system. Starting in 2008, the company
conducted a three-phase pilot program. For the first phase, T-Systems evaluated the features of Windows 7. For the second phase, T-Systems conducted a series of compatibility tests on the 2,000-plus line-of-business applications that the company uses for daily operations. For the third phase, developers built the proprietary solutions for the Windows 7 environment.
T-Systems uses Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2 Service Pack 2 to help deploy Windows 7 to its internal and external customers. Because System Center Configuration Manager is tightly integrated with Windows 7, IT experts at T-Systems can update servers, computers, and devices across physical, virtual, distributed, and mobile environments. To streamline deployment, the
company employs a centralized provisioning system—which includes a catalog engine called electronic catalog (ECAT)—from which a user can carry out a deployment, order new software, and manage rights, for example. T-Systems is also upgrading to the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system to help manage software and file services.
T Systems has implemented Windows 7 on 1,150 PCs throughout the company, including workers in the engineering, sales, development, training, and consulting services groups. Additionally, the software test engineering group is running Windows 7 and conducting compatibility tests on applications. T-Systems has deployed Windows 7 to 4,200 customer PCs.
Evaluating Windows 7 Features T-Systems is evaluating the
DirectAccess feature in Windows 7, which employees can use to access corporate resources from the road without relying on third-party virtual private network (VPN) software. The company is also evaluating AppLocker, a feature of Windows 7 that gives IT administrators control over what applications are allowed to run on a PC.
The company manages its PC fleet centrally and is tightening security by making use of the improved Group Policy settings in the Active Directory service to standardize client
configurations. Also, the operating system deployment includes an upgrade to the Windows Internet Explorer 8 web browser, which gives IT administrators improved control over corporate website security. Moreover, the company is using the browser to run
“The new power
management features
in Windows 7 save
power much more
aggressively. This is the
only way to save
energy today, and it’s
good because we
want to use Green IT.”
all web applications. “We’re using the security features in Windows 7
intensively and have multiple ways to manage security centrally,” says Reinhardt. “For example, we can determine which websites are trusted and which require a higher level of security.”
To enhance security on portable computers, T-Systems is using the BitLocker drive encryption feature in Windows 7, which helps prevent unauthorized users from accessing sensitive information. To promote an environmentally friendly infrastructure, T-Systems is centrally configuring power management by using PowerCfg.exe, a command-line power-diagnosis utility available with Windows 7, and
enforcing Group Policy preferences, such as display brightness.
Determining Application Compatibility To determine which applications are compatible with Windows 7 and which ones are not, the company uses the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5—downloadable tools used to evaluate and mitigate compatibility issues before deploying Windows 7—in combination with other tools. So far, about 80 percent of the company’s line-of-business applications are compatible with the operating system or require slight modifications. “We tested 650 applications and easily pinpointed the ones that needed remediation,” says Reinhardt. “Using the Application Compatibility Toolkit has been a very positive experience and helped us to get our applications running with Windows 7.”
To resolve outstanding application incompatibilities, T-Systems takes a three-pronged approach. The first step is to make some applications available
on Remote Desktop Services, a virtualization technology available in Windows Server 2008 R2, which employees use to access applications on a remote PC over a network. Next, the company takes advantage of a component of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack—Microsoft Application Virtualization (App-V) 4.6 Service Pack 2—which makes it possible for applications to reside on centrally managed virtual services. The final tactic is to normalize incompatible applications or to install an application on an earlier operating system running in a virtual environment on a
dedicated desktop. T-Systems employees can stream virtualized applications over the corporate network.
Building T-Systems Solutions in the Windows 7 Environment
While deploying Windows 7 internally, the company is updating its Managed Workplace Services offerings using the same technologies. In particular, it has developed the User Relocation Tool, a proprietary product and process that provides an end-to-end outsourcing service that enables customers to quickly and easily transition to Windows 7 from Windows XP or Windows Vista. As part of the transformation process, T-Systems first analyzes a customer’s infrastructure, including software and hardware assets, Active Directory structure, network, databases, and so on. Then T-Systems develops a proposal for migrating to a Windows 7–based infrastructure. The User Relocation Tool standardizes and encrypts migration data and can be extended to meet customer requirements. (See Figure 1.)
“Using the Application
Compatibility Toolkit
has been a very
positive experience
and helped us to get
our applications
running with Windows
7.”
T-Systems can manage the migration of an entire network of customer
computers centrally by using System Center Configuration Manager and other deployment tools. By employing the hard-link migration feature in the User State Migration Tool 4.0, a scriptable command-line tool that is available in Windows 7, the company can leave local data—such as profile, configuration, and favorites—on the user’s machine while deployment is in progress. “The hard-link migration feature in the User State Migration Tool 4.0 makes it easy to migrate user files and settings from one operating system to another,” say Reinhardt. “It’s an excellent tool that is flexible and adaptive.”
Every aspect of the T-Systems User Relocation Tool offering is predefined, and the process includes the flexibility to customize a migration to address a customer’s needs. For example, the offering is available in multiple
languages and can be configured to deploy the operating system to new hardware. “We’ve taken what we’ve learned from our Windows 7 pilot deployment to create a standard approach that uses Microsoft technologies,” says Reinhardt.
“Because of this, we can implement in any kind of environment, start
migrations faster, and offer them at a reduced price.”
Beginning in 2011, T-Systems will apply its User Relocation Tool and process to begin an internal rollout of Windows 7 to all PCs companywide and then to all PCs worldwide for Deutsche Telekom and its subsidiaries. This will include about 150,000 PCs at approximately 1,000 locations, and is part of a wholesale upgrading of the IT
infrastructure at Deutsche Telekom. The rollout will take a Zero Touch
approach—employees won’t need to interact with the upgrade process— and the User Relocation Tool will be employed for user data migration. T-Systems expects to complete the upgrade sometime in 2012.
Benefits
Reinhardt. “People are really comfortable with it.”
Enhances Employee Productivity T-Systems reports that employees find the Windows 7 interface intuitive and report that the operating system starts and shuts down faster than previous versions. “Windows 7 has a more ergonomic interface that’s faster and easier to use,” says Reinhardt. “Workers are saving several minutes a day.” Employees also report great satisfaction with the Windows Search feature in Windows 7, which quickly delivers a list of all relevant documents, email messages, and media found on the PC and libraries.
Streamlines IT Workload
By deploying Windows 7, T-Systems is standardizing its IT infrastructure. With new Group Policy settings, it can limit user rights so that employees won’t be able to make many changes to their computers; this standardization tightens security and has the potential to reduce the number of technical support incidents. By using BitLocker, the company tightens data security on PCs.
T-Systems also anticipates that its IT staff members will save time and boost efficiency because the operating system includes command-line tools that administrators can use to
automate deployment tasks. “The hard-link migration feature in the User State Migration Tool is the most important part in the deployment process because it speeds up migration,” says Andreas Krischer, Project Lead for Windows 7 Program for External Markets at T-Systems. “With the User State
Migration Tool, we can reduce an eight-hour process to an hour.” Reduces Power Usage
The company uses power
management tools that come with Windows 7 to decrease power
consumption across the enterprise and extend battery life on portable
computers. “The new power management features in Windows 7 save power much more aggressively,” says Reinhardt. “This is the only way to save energy today, and it’s good because we want to use Green IT.” Expands Company Innovation T-Systems used System Center Configuration Manager 2007 to help develop the User Relocation Tool solution and integrate broad-scale, standardized Windows 7
implementations into its offerings. “We’re using the internal migration to Windows 7 to innovate products for our customers,” says Reinhardt. “The new technologies available in Windows 7 are extremely relevant for information and communications technology systems. We’re excited about the features that we can pass along to our customers.”
Increases Customer Satisfaction By incorporating Windows 7 into its offerings, T-Systems expects to help customers reduce costs; enhance benefits, such as security; and improve IT management by automating deployment and PC management. Because Windows 7 includes several robust features, such as BitLocker and DirectAccess, T-Systems expects that customers may be able to eliminate third-party products.
Figure 1 – T-Systems has
developed the User
Relocation Tool, a
proprietary product and
process that enables
customers to quickly and
easily transition to
Windows 7 from Windows
XP or Windows Vista.
“Windows 7 has a
more ergonomic
interface that’s faster
and easier to use.
Workers are saving
several minutes a
day.”
“With BitLocker, our customers will have built-in encryption technology and may no longer have to pay licensing fees for third-party tools,” Reinhardt says. “With DirectAccess, they may be able to reduce licensing costs for VPN software. We definitely expect our customers to see a cost savings with Windows 7.”
Windows 7
Works the way you want: Windows 7 will help your organization use information technology to gain a competitive advantage in today’s new world of work. Your people will be able to be more productive anywhere. You will be able to support your mobile workforce with better access to shared data and collaboration tools. And your IT staff will have better tools and technologies for enhanced corporate IT security and data protection, and more efficient deployment and management. For more information about Windows 7, go to:
www.microsoft.com/windows/windows -7
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about T-Systems products and services, visit the
website at: www.t-systems.com
This case study is for informational purposes only.
Software and Services
Windows 7 Enterprise
Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
− Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2
Microsoft Desktop Optimization
Pack
− Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5
Technologies
− Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit 5.5
− Windows Internet Explorer 8 − Windows User State Migration Tool
