10 Smart Reasons to Use Ivanti for Your OS Upgrade
Instead of barely surviving an OS migration, wouldn’t it be nice to roll out that shiny new OS and a better IT environment at the same time? What if you could do all that and still keep migration costs relatively low?
To the average IT professional, that might sound too good to be true. But you’re not the average IT professional (hint: we only let above average IT professionals read this blog), so it doesn’t come as a surprise to you that Ivanti offers huge advantages when it comes to OS migration.
1. Your software license compliance remains intact after the upgrade
Ivanti creates a “Software License Mapping Matrix” for those programs that are standard among every single computer in your environment (MS Office, Adobe Acrobat Reader, etc.), as well as for “less standard” applications (Adobe Acrobat Professional). You don’t waste budget deploying software licenses to employees who didn’t need them in the first place.
Whether you’re upgrading an existing machine to Windows 7, 8, or 10 from XP, or refreshing hardware with Windows 7 or 8 on it—you need to migrate software licenses based on your mapped plan and your licensing capabilities.
2. Know your upgrade progress at any time
It’s a fair question: “What executive dashboards are available to show me the status of our migrations?”
The Ivanti SmartVue customizable dashboard application for tablets and smartphones provides IT departments and business executives a real-time view of what’s happening in the IT environment based on time and location. You can inform executives of migration progress against plan, e.g., how many machines are being migrated on average per business day, per week, or per month.
And with help from Ivanti Professional Services, you can forecast and display how much time remains in the migration process at the current pace, taking into account that migration success rates drop off dramatically for the remaining 20 percent of machines, typically due to some machines needing more attention or being temporarily unavailable (in storage, users on maternity or paternity leave, etc.).
3. Users have everything they need, including non-standard applications
The Software License Mapping Matrix mentioned earlier enables you to map out and preserve all the apps, packages, utilities, websites, favorites, virtualized apps, MED-V, Spoon, ThinApp, etc. that employees care about and that are critical to the business.
We’re able to detect the versions of those apps and then map where you want those located on the new machine. You can also leverage this ability as an opportunity for standardization, for example, migrating a particular application to the same version of the application or creating a new standard across the organization.
4. Security standards are maintained once you’ve upgraded
The Ivanti OS upgrade solution is not just an imaging component or a systems management tool. It’s a process-based approach that also includes an endpoint security component.
With it you can make sure that machines meet Microsoft Windows vulnerability patch baseline and that appropriate patches for Microsoft and third party apps, antivirus definitions, etc., are addressed to meet compliance standards such as PCI and HIPAA.
5. Users are provided with upgrade scheduling options
Users are less resistant to a migration when they know what’s coming and can have input into the scheduling of changes to their machine. If you’ve experienced a major OS migration previously, you might recall the frustration that arose when scheduling the migration with the end user.
Many times the IT resource would be dispatched to the end user’s desk to perform the migration, only to find that the user was not prepared or could not perform the migration. This type of miscommunication can totally derail the overall migration schedule and generate serious cost overruns and delays.
Using the Ivanti Process Manager web console, you define the policies that govern how the migration process will function in your environment. You can easily schedule the migration event, communicate with end users, and gain the needed approvals to safely move forward. If the end user needs to change the migration date, it’s not an issue. The process engine simply makes the change with no impact on IT resources.
In addition to managing the schedule, the process engine can communicate with the end user well in advance of the migration date. These communications serve as a mechanism to educate and guide the end user through the migration process. The communications can also be used to deliver special instructions or links to more advanced training designed to help the user through the transition.
What’s more, because the Ivanti process engine manages the communications between the end user and the migration process, it’s possible to have the end user give the final go-ahead before the migration takes place. This method provides a clear audit trail that documents the notifications and approvals granted by the end user.
This seamless integration between Ivanti Process Manager and LANDESK Management Suite enables you to fully automate the migration process and transform an old XP machine into a new Windows 10 device with everything the user needs to perform their job function. But most importantly, you’re able to extend your existing IT resources and accomplish the migration process with minimal disruption and cost.
6. Simplify your upgrade with fewer images
With Ivanti, there’s no need for multiple images to migrate machines of varying models or manufacturers. Hardware-independent imaging capabilities handle the two toughest pieces that cause “blue screens”— the hardware abstraction layer (HAL) and the mass storage driver—as well as all your plug-and-play drivers.
If you get either the HAL or the mass storage driver pieces in your imaging process wrong, that machine will blue screen, that migration will fail, and there will be associated downtime. And chances are if it happens to one machine it will happen to many. Ivanti takes care of these issues for you.
While problems with plug-and-play drivers don’t cause blue screens, items like appropriate monitor resolution or issues with printers, scanners, or trackpads hinder users from being as productive as they could be. Instead of having one image that contains all the drivers for all possible systems in the environment, Ivanti enables you to download only the drivers necessary for each machine, which could mean reducing the size of the image from 15 GB to 8 GB because in some instances 7 GB of image space is taken up by drivers only
7. You avoid excessive network utilization during upgrade
Ivanti Targeted Multicast™ and Ivanti Peer Download™ content delivery tools reduce bandwidth consumption and server resource usage, eliminating redundant traffic over your WAN and LAN links. Targeted Multicast technology makes it possible to distribute large packages to many users across the network with a minimum of network traffic. You can easily distribute software, even in those WAN environments with multiple hops and low connection speeds (56k).
Instead of sending a package across the wire for each device, only one transfer is made for each subnet. Bandwidth savings increase as the number of devices on each subnet increases. Peer Download is a Targeted Multicast option that forces targeted devices to install a package from a device’s local cache or from a peer on the same subnet to conserve network bandwidth.
8. Machines meet your new naming standards as part of the upgrade
A decision engine determines how a machine will look once it’s upgraded, and this also encompasses PC renaming. You have the opportunity to provide consistent naming standards, whether based on a company prefix, user name, site prefix, country prefix, machine prefix, or any other standard.
9. Make your hardware refresh as simple as any upgrade
It’s a common misconception that migration challenges are easily solved simply by purchasing new hardware with Windows 8/10 preinstalled. Of course, many users have aging machines and organizations have considered XP’s end-of-life as a business justification to replace hardware. But what about the company’s standard image or the software applications needed by the end user? In addition, what about the user data? How will that get on the new computer? End users won’t appreciate the new system if none of their profile or application settings have been migrated. And network and security teams will have the added burden of getting the users into the domain and ensuring that the devices are secure.
While the refresh process is a viable method for getting a new operating system, many of the same costs and resource demands still exist to support the end user. Ivanti provides the capability to accomplish all the migration tasks listed in the following table so that everything looks the way it should and you don’t end up with a mess.
10. All drivers are updated during your migration
With Ivanti, all drivers are up-to-date as part of the migration. Integration capabilities with Lenovo, HP, and other hardware brands ensure that BIOS, value-added software, ThinkVantage Technologies, HP battery monitoring, and other drivers supported and endorsed by the manufacturer, are kept up-to-date and installed in the first place.
Upgrading from Windows XP, 7, or 8 to Windows 10 can be a challenge, but Ivanti Upgrade Services addresses all the major obstacles. We can provide assistance in set-up and configuration as well as performing the actual migrations. Our project managers keep the upgrades running at a predictable pace, communicating with you every step of the way. You gain a long-term solution that enables you to keep your devices current.