Preparing for a Company-Wide Migration to Windows 8 - Assignment Example

(Write here) (Write the here) (Write the here) (Write the here) Introduction Crescent Manufacturing Incorporation is an enterprise that mainly deals on products of home furnishing and decorations. It has a number of branches apart from its main offices located at Texas while the other operational offices located at the Nebraska and Maryland. In day to day operations the incorporation puts into use of computer machines. These machines operate from the operating systems and specifically the Windows 7 operating system whose vendor is the Microsoft Corporation. This has been its operation for a long period of time and it endeavors to migrate from the Windows 7 to Windows 8 platforms due to the vast growth of the latters applications. The Texas and the Nebraska systems have been upgraded to new machines that can run the Windows 8 platform compatibly while the Maryland departments are still operating from their old systems. The concerns of the Chief Information Officer are to whether the process of upgrading to Windows 8 platform would be viable in terms of cost, operation, addressing the companys needs accordingly, software compatibility issues, training of employees, and the overall time it would consume to fully migrate and start the operations. The whole process would be a migration one and this report would entirely cover the analysis of the Project, the upgrade process, the recommendations and finally the conclusions. Project Description The project is to upgrade from the use of the Windows 7 operating system to the Windows 8 operating system on the client side while use the Windows Server 2008 and 2012 that is an Active-Directory-based environment. The operating system is the basic system software that a computer needs to run any other generic or open source applications for business operations. Every operating system comes with its advantageous and disadvantageous features that either makes it a choice or not to different companies. For this case study we are focusing on the upgrading scheme of Crescent Manufacturing Incorporation from the Windows 7 to Windows 8 operating system. This is due to the advice from the IT experts in the company due to the good number of features they thought would mean a great success of the companys daily operations. SWOT (strength, weakness, opportunity and threats) analysis The SWOT analysis covers the deeper look into a project including the strengths, weakness, opportunities, and the probable threats the project may bring about on its implementation. Zeroing in to this project that is being undertaken by the Crescent Manufacturing Incorporation of upgrading to the Windows 8 platform there lies a number of advantages, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the day to day operations of the company. SWOT analysis tries to cover the internal and external features that affect the overall process of upgrading to the new client and server interface. These are the main issues that a company should have a deeper look into to ensure a sustainable migration process. The strengths and weaknesses are categorized under the internal while the opportunities and the threats are kept into the external features. Strengths From the issues on discussion about the project it seems the company is targeting to using the latest technologies in managing its operation and enhancing an effective communication scheme for the overall good of the business. When upgrading system the entitled committee or staff is at stake to ensure that the strengths of the project are deeply analyzed to avoid future regressions on their business operations as a whole. The strengths of any project are mainly affected by the internal features and organization of the involved company. For the case of the Crescent Incorporation, it needs a deeper analysis since it has a number of branches and all of them needs to be involved when consenting on this critical issue. Technology experts and analysts need to be immensely incorporated to ensure a stable and reliable system for the future prosperity. The strengths of this projects are those features that would place the company to a higher global scale in its operation. When using the Windows 8 interface the company mainly looks at the advantages it would bring about on its operation. This advantages run just right from, financial, information control and handling, application management, and the overall impact on the employees. The companys financial gains are to be improved upon migration to the Windows 8 platform. This could be the main reason for upgrading to the interface. The Windows 8 platform comes with a number of well and simple interface that saves on the resources spent on training employees and this also saves greatly on the time which is a very import resource in business operation. This interface is a well advanced graphical user interface that the user can picturize on what they are performing at that given time. The Windows 8 platform comes with a number of well and versed security features that enable maintenance of information to its confidential level and also promotes its sharing between authorized parties. This features include the live ID and SkyDrive features that can distinguish between an administrative log in and the guest log in. this makes information well protected since only information entitled to guests would be made available to them while the administrators get the overall privilege. The SkyDrive feature enables users equipped with the log in credentials to share and modify information to suit their tastes from different locations. This would be a great advantage to Crescent company since it has got a number of office located at different places and hence the need for a proper communication process. On the issue of application management, the platform has an advanced Windows App Store feature that would enable the IT staff to manage and control the standard applications that employees those working both from home and office to install in their machines and this would greatly mitigate the issue of non-standard applications that end up ruining the company. Weaknesses Every project that has to be implemented has got challenges or weakness and this case is not an exception. There would be a number of weaknesses that the migration process would pose to the entire corporation. This challenges include, financial, employees output and behavior, time consumption, and the overall operation of the company. The overall migration process would require quite a large amount of money to finance its stages. These capitals would be drawn from the companys accounts while the old systems being disposed and hence this means that there would be quite a loss that would need a quick recovery. Coming down to the challenge of employees’ reaction and overall output may be on the other hand be negatively affected. When the company does not take good measures to ensure that even the training is done prior to migration a very severe challenge may become difficult to combat at the end. This challenges may be those of employee unable to operate the machine, information leaking from their systems without their consent, not well versed with the knowledge of the systems would reduce the overall output. The behavior of the employees too can change and affect the interrelationship between the staff and even the administration. Opportunities Opportunities in this case mean all the unexploited niches that the migration process would make the company to exploit after its implementation. This would highlight all the innovations and improvements that the upgrade process would enable the company as a whole realize. For the Crescent Corporation, the migration from Windows 7 to Windows 8 it would not real mean a great pool of niches since there are only few improvements on the latter operating system, however, there exists some other opportunities that if well utilized can bring a great improvement to the operations of the company. For instance, due to the ever advancing technology the machines and applications being developed are mainly compatible to the Windows 8 operating system. This means that the company speed of operation would be enhanced and as well as having a large pool of enterprise applications to choose from and hence automate its operation for prosperity. Threats This refers to what risks the new system would pose to the company upon approval. These risks may be effective or may not affect adversely the companys operation. For this case of the Crescent Corporation the new system would come with the following threats. The Windows 8 operating systems are vulnerable to crashing and also quite unstable with some machines which may lead to lower speeds of operation and severely bad losing of critical business information upon crashing. They are expensive to maintain due to constant updates that needs the Internet connection and hence the consumption of data bundles. Upgrade plan for the Crescent Manufacturing Incorporation Number of systems required The company has a number of departments in every of their offices located at the Texas, Maryland, and Nebraska. Some of the departments include, the operation, marketing, administration, IT, human resource and manufacturing departments. These departments have to be specified the number of systems they need according to the task and workforce deployed. The main offices are located at the Texas, the Nebraska is mainly for manufacturing processes while the Maryland harbors all the other departments. The company in total has 450 employees, where 250 are deployed at the Texas, 175 at Maryland and 25 at Nebraska. Therefore, upon approval the operation department would need at least 10 computer machines, the marketing counterpart would need at least 5 machines, administrative one needs at least 5 machines, the human resource department needs 3 machines, and the IT department would require 5 client based machines and two servers for an effective network and server-client administration. The total machines required in all company locations is at least 30 systems to enhance a complete migration scheme. The manufacturing department would need 2 machines since their main operations are manufacturing and these would be used for communication and information storage processes. On the edge of the sales staff of 50 employees they would be provided with at least 10 laptops, 10 IPads, 10 tablets, and 20 smart phones where the criteria of allocation will mainly depend on the role of each sales person. This would ensure cost reduction to enhance proper use and sales improvement. Upgrade Technique I would recommend a phased-in approach. This means that the whole process would be conducted in phases from departments to departments. This would enable the company realize the effects and probable challenges the process may be accompanied with and be at a position of correcting them at in future phases. The mostly recommended department to begin with would be the IT department since from here all other processes would be managed. This is where the experts are and the research and monitoring of the system behavior would begin here and recommendations made accordingly. The next department would be the operation department since from here all other active activities of the company are monitored and evaluated. This is a very critical department and the upgrade scheme would be implemented here upon approval and made stable so that the activities are not hampered. After all this the other departments can now be upgraded. The cost of upgrading would be spread and this means that the whole process would not require a sudden funding which could be hard to achieve. This is a good practice since its costly friendly and at the same time an effective time usage and easy to implement. The training of the employees should also be phased so as to allow the company to operate with other staff as others undergo training to avoid stopping activities from taking place. This would also promote an efficient training process since only few individuals would be engaged and hence the output would be significantly positive. Time Requirements The upgrade process would all times be a time consuming exercise in any company. For this case the process would require a time frame of different lengths depending on the department involved. The migration activities involve purchase of the systems that are software and hardware compatible, installation of the operating system, laying down of the network cables, installation of the server operating system, training of the operable personnel, and at last putting the systems into use. The purchase process would involve the procurement phase and the delivery phases. This phases would take a length of time relative to the response of the companys financial department but a well-planned process would take at most 5 months. The installation process is not a hectic one since the involved parties are well trained to handle the systems. This means that the installation process can run up to two weeks at most to install and make the systems operable. Here it will involve installing the operating system, providing updates and all the relevant applications needed to complement their operation. Also installing the server operating system and updating the network policies to monitor and manage other client machines in the network for an efficient information control and communication mechanism. The process of laying down the network modules would be estimated to take at most 1 month and the overall process would be complete. The routers and the laying of access points would be a hectic process and hence time length of 1 month would be quite enough to handle the activities. The training activity is another one that is a time consuming process. But since the activity is phased, the overall time that would be taken to train the relevant accomplices is well spread though it highly depends on the number of employees of the company. For the case of Crescent Incorporation whose employees’ base is 450 the estimated time length would be 1 year for a well trained staff. This is quite time consuming but at the end it would realize an efficient task force. This period of time would include the workshops and seminars. Testing of Business Applications Testing of business applications prior to the upgrade process is a good practice to undertake. This mitigates the risks of occurrence of unplanned budgets and overheads. This also allows the procurement of best machines for the employees and the sales department at long end. It is therefore, good to define an effective technique of testing the applications accordingly and making them compatible with the business systems. There are a number of testing methodologies and testing tools that evaluates business applications before installation. In this case I would recommend the use of gray box technique since it has the testing of the code and functionality of the application. Some of this business critical applications needs to be deeply tested from the code to their performance while others would need a performance test. There are a number of testing tools that test the functionality of the application. In this case the business applications would need a performance test to avoid time wastage since most of this applications are readily available in the application store. Securing the laptops and tablets This is another important point in managing the applications and usage of business machines by the staff members. Securing and monitoring the installation of applications need to be centralized so to have the IT team to be the only authorized people to manage them. Therefore, this needs to put in place several efficient methods of securing the tablets and laptops to avoid information lose and leakage in case of machine lose or damage. The ways of securing the BYOD devices are hard since these devices are used with different employees but once the IT team recognizes the rules and rights they can make it simple and easy. The IT team can enforce strong passcodes to the devices that can be too hard to guess to unauthorized users and this would in great deal mitigate the information lose and leakage and mishandling. The team can as well as install the anti-virus protection and data loss prevention policies to ensure that malware and virus related software do not gain access to the machines accounts and the information being transacted along. On the other hand the storage spaces such as SD-cards and hard disks should be encrypted to ensure that even the hackers do not gain access to the information in background. This widely secures the devices and helps avoiding information loss. Wiping information to damaged and lost devices is a need to secure the devices. This is done by the mobile device management applications to wipe the sensitive information and data. The sensitive information such as companys data should be wiped immediately from lost devices to avoid landing on malicious hands. Application control policies should be deployed on the internal network and the application store to ensure that the employees install standard applications only from the app store. Configuration of Applocker Applocker is an application that locks applications that are not to be installed in the business devices. The Applocker has got merits and demerits according to the specifications of the IT team. Applocker automates the process of monitoring the applications on BYOD devices. This policy can be specified through the Active Directory environment supported by the Windows 2012 server to set other rules for the staff to follow when installing applications. The Applocker has the benefits of automating the process of specifying what and what not to install on the devices of the employees, saves on time for the IT team, saves on resources and also misuse of companys devices and mitigates the risks of data loss. However, Applocker has got some disadvantages of virus and other malware software can easily take the advantage and run from the background since an efficient monitoring policy is not in place. The Applocker application can as well limit the employees from playing their own stuffs on the machines and this may kill their morale in producing a better output to the organization. Therefore, if the Applocker issue has more demerits than merits then the IT team has the mandate to look for other suitable alternatives to address the matter on hand to ensure a higher performance of the employees and at the same time that of the Crescent Incorporation as a whole. Update and Application installation Updates on installed applications and security policies and installing new applications is a practice that is constantly conducted to ensure that the business system is up to date and well-functioning. There is need to define a well advanced process to ensure that the updates are done in most frequent manner and even automated to ensure that it is done efficiently. In the Crescent Incorporation the Windows Application Store would mainly be used to provide the storage place for the business applications. From here the IT team can as easily update the current applications and even provide new applications needed by the corporate staff. Through the use of the Windows 2012 server it has the Applocker that sets policy and rules to manage application upgrade and update in the Windows Store. The applications can be installed by the administrator or even the end users themselves but the concerns of the Chief Information Officer is to ensure that only standard applications are installed and this would call for the the IT team to be the only privileged staff to update and upgrade the applications in the store. The Windows 8 operating system comes with the application store feature just at the start interface and this allows the users to update the applications that are on the update list and even find for new applications from the Internet through the interface. This, however, would not be recommended since the company wants the IT team to be the only responsible team to update the Windows Store. This then calls for a well advanced use of the Applocker configured with a number of well-defined Software Restriction Policies that would enhance an efficient application installation and updates. With the Applocker the IT team can set rule exceptions, which is set those applications that the end users can run but those with administrative effects such as the registry editor would be denied form the users. Also with the Applocker, the administrators are capable of monitoring the upgrade and update of the business applications. Recommendations All steps described above it would be the mandate of the administrative and IT departments to implement the migration process with a phased-in approach and considering all the security issues. This would see the company improve and well put into use of new technologies offered by the Windows 8 and Windows server 2012 operating systems for sales and operational productivity. Reference 1. Important Windows 8 features retrieved from the https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Important-New-Windows-8-Features-165/ 2. Application Testing retrieved from the http://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/application-testing-into-the-basics-of-software-testing/ 3. How to keep employees smartphones, tablets and laptops secure retrieved from the https://www.sophos.com/en-us/security-news-trends/security-trends/byod-risks-rewards/how-to-secure-byods.aspx 4. Upgrading and Updating the Windows 8 applications retrieved from the HTTP://blogs.technet.com/b/chrisavis/archive/2013/02/27/upgrading-and-updating-windows-8-application-part-18-of-19.aspx Read More