Windows 7 - the story so far

Microsoft is preparing for the 22 October consumer launch of Windows 7, but the operating system can already be deployed by IT departments following its release to corporate licensees in September.

Computing talked to some of these early adopters about their experiences with Windows 7.

The first question for many IT managers will be whether or not their current hardware can run Windows 7?

Warwick County Council’s technical development manager for children’s services Chris Page migrated 500 systems to Windows 7 for Ash Green School ready for the start of the new school term.

“We took over anything up to five years old, because we run a five-year procurement cycle. All the old hardware could take Windows 7, even a vintage
mobile Intel Pentium-M processor system,” said Page.

Another potential problem when moving to a new operating system is application compatibility ­ making sure software that ran on the old version of Windows runs on the new one.

One organisation that encountered such a problem was the South East Coast Ambulance (SECAmb) Service NHS Trust.

SECAmb director of information management and technology Ian Arbuthnot said its anti-virus software vendor had released a version compatible with Windows 7, but it was only a beta version.

“We weren’t comfortable rolling out a beta to our users, so we moved to Microsoft’s Forefront security package,” said Arbuthnot.

Another way around application compatibility is to virtualise the software, a method employed by BT’s chief technology officer for end-user technology, Peter Scott, for the telecoms giant’s migration from XP to Windows 7.

BT has a formal application accreditation process, said Scott.

“We use application streaming, with virtualised applications that run ‘sandboxed’ ­ a security measure that means [different applications] do not interfere with each other. Consequently, application accreditation costs are lower,” he said.

Another way of ensuring application compatibility is to use “XP Mode”, which allows Windows 7 to run XP applications using an XP virtual machine under Virtual PC. XP Mode needs hardware virtualisation support from the processor, and needs to be turned on in Bios.

BT addressed some application compatibility issues by using XP Mode. “It is a good way to remove the brick wall of sorting out something like 1,000 applications for us. All our core applications run, but the extra complexity of XP Mode is something we want to get rid of over time,” said Scott.

Another challenge when upgrading to Windows 7 is device driver compatibility. SECAmb’s Arbuthnot had a problem with mobile workers using 3G data cards.
“It was only a small issue that crept in with some of our 3G card drivers, but we understand the vendors are close to issuing updated ones,” he said.

Warwickshire County Council’s Page said that talking to existing suppliers was essential.

“When we upgraded to XP, the only glitches we had with device drivers was with printers. We did validate our printer estate, but fortunately all the printers we
had when we rolled out Windows 7 were covered under a ‘compatibility by HP’ agreement,” he said.

All of the examples above were migrations to 32-bit Windows 7 systems, but driver compatibility was one of the issues BT had in moving to 64-bit desktops.

“One of the big machinations we went through was whether to go 32- or 64-bit, which really came down to a decision based on the need for drivers to be 64-bit compatible,” said Scott.

The drivers are available for BT’s hardware, but for home users the situation is more of a challenge.

“When a user goes home and plugs in a device such as a printer for which there isn’t a 64-bit driver, problems arise ­- so at the moments we’re 32-bit,” said Scott.

Moving from thin clients to Windows 7 at BAA

BAA runs seven UK airports, including Gatwick, Heathrow and Stansted, servicing 200 million passengers a year with 12,000 operational and security staff. The company is currently implementing a £6.6bn capital investment programme.

“We have a clear five-year plan, with £600m to be spent on IT systems and infrastructure, which includes Windows 7, Exchange and SharePoint rollouts being at the heart of the process of simplification,” said BAA chief information officer Philip Langsdale.

BAA is bucking the trend of firms moving to thin client systems, by moving to Windows-based PCs. “We’re taking a phased deployment approach, because we have a very large Citrix/Wyse environment,” said Langsdale.

“We’re not going to rush deployment, but over the coming months I want to be able to move over to a PC-based world, and only five per cent of our systems could run Windows 7 currently,” he said.

“We have some issues with application migration, but not particularly big ones, because the applications are virtualised already. We’ve also done lots of stress testing on Windows 7 systems ­ it’s been a good, easy migration so far.”