Windows 7: Why I'm Rolling It Out Early

While many IT organizations say they're in no rush to roll out Windows 7, the City of Miami, already a Vista shop, won't wait. Here's a look at the IT plan and reasoning.

Comments

What About Learning Curve, Upgrade Costs?

Two major concerns with any OS upgrade are the learning curve for users and upgrade costs. Osteen says the City of Miami is in an enviable position because of its Vista deployment.

"We are not concerned with the learning curve for Windows 7 due to our early adoption of Vista in our environment."

Osteen says the previous training for Vista will help XP users move to Windows 7. "When we transition Vista and XP desktops to Windows 7, we feel this move will be more evolutionary and require little interaction with those users." He adds that the City of Miami will do tests with a pilot program to confirm that the transition goes smoothly.

Among the actions Osteen will take to minimize upgrade costs, he'll use MDT 2010 (Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010) to help automate parts of the upgrade and schedule the Windows 7 upgrade to coincide with the purchase of new computers.

"We expect that the upgrade costs will be more than offset by increased client productivity and decreased desktop support costs," says Osteen.