Windows 2000 migration - hit or miss?

Stability, security, smart management and web integration. These are just some of the advantages that Microsoft's Windows 2000 can bring to your organisation. But moving to a new operating system (OS) is a lot like moving house - things can get lost or broken along the way, making the transition a little rough.

Windows 2000 adds a mountain of features that are new to the Windows family. Many are designed to make day-to-day use and manageability of servers far easier. What's more, on comparable hardware, Windows 2000 is faster than Windows 98 and about as fast as Windows NT 4.

Here we talk to three UK users that have taken the plunge and upgraded to Windows 2000 about how they have fared so far. But first, what exactly are we talking about, and what claims is Microsoft making for its baby?

The new operating system comes in several flavours: Professional, Server, Advanced Server and Datacenter Server. Professional is a client OS, and a successor to NT Workstation 4. Server, the standard business version, is the successor to NT Server 4, while Advanced Server is designed to handle more database-intensive work on larger networks. Datacenter Server is aimed at large data warehouses, internet service providers, online transaction processing, and large-scale science and engineering simulations.

One of the most eagerly anticipated features is Active Directory, which is the key to realising the benefits of the desktop controls and domain groups. Active Directory supports larger domains, making it easier to manage large networks. Consolidating domains takes time, and Active Directory's features require more technical resources, but in the long run your network will be simpler to administrate without trusted domains and multiple hierarchies.

Windows 2000 goes a long way towards proving Microsoft's argument that its Intel architecture yields a lower cost of ownership than proprietary Unix systems. For example, Active Directory facilitates the use of management features such as SysPrep, for cloning PC configurations across a network, and IntelliMirror, which lets users access their data on workstations around a network.

Microsoft's party line
The Microsoft pitch for Windows 2000 goes something like this: more functionality plus easier administration, for the same price as Windows NT, equals lower cost of ownership. "It's the first release of Windows where the things that end users get excited about - performance and reliability - are balanced by the things that IT people want - security, software deployment and ease of management," Bill Gates, now Microsoft's 'chief software architect', told the audience at the Windows 2000 launch back in February.

Microsoft's own figures, not surprisingly, seem to support this. The company released details of two beta customers in the US - Micronpc.com and United Defense - which demonstrated the potential of Windows 2000 to lower PC ownership costs. Bottom line results? The two companies saw IT spending fall by 15 per cent and downtime costs slashed by half. Microsoft hired Gartner to audit the results.

More boldly, it also claims that Windows 2000 can actually increase revenues through the creation of measurable business advantages. The company's 'rapid economic justification' system measures the financial benefits of Windows 2000 deployment, including increased worker productivity, lessened support requirements and faster time to market.

"We devised the system in response to customers and analysts," explains Deborah Willingham, Microsoft's vice-president of enterprise marketing. "Some of their thinking was that in assessing total cost of ownership, you have to include top line revenue increases created by IT."

But at $400 or more per desktop for software, services and training, an upgrade to Windows 2000 could cost a business with 1000 PCs anything from $400,000 up to $1m. This figure, which doesn't include the cost of server migration, represents a sizeable investment. So what's the payback?

Studies of Panasonic Consumer Electronics and Marks & Spencer both showed upgrade costs of $900 per PC, but forecast return on investment of 400 per cent over three years, according to Giga Information Group. If you are interested in a similar calculation for your own business, Microsoft has a toolkit available through its website that will let customers crunch the numbers themselves.

For all of Windows 2000's cost-saving features, the payback will be hard to come by without careful planning. "Windows 2000 isn't a magic bullet," says Gartner's research director Michael Gartenberg. "The cost benefits will come from using Windows 2000 as a means to achieve a well-managed environment."

Gartner estimates that companies which support their Windows 2000 rollouts with strong PC policies and staff training could save up to 26 per cent with the new OS. However, the firm cautions that some Windows 2000 rollouts will encounter compatibility problems with existing IT environments - news that caused Microsoft's stock to fall sharply.

Case study one: Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts
Implementation: Windows 2000 on 160 desktops, four servers
Partners: Computacenter, Compaq
Business aims: To improve performance over existing Windows 95 environment
Successes: Completed implementation in less than three months
Problems: Difficulties with reporting and incompatible printer drivers
Lessons learnt: Use correct manufacturers' drivers and test everything before going ahead with Windows 2000 Server

The Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts, based in Paul McCartney's old school, needs technology to support the work of its students. Modern entertainment - with its soundstages, lighting rigs and video effects - relies heavily on technology, and the network which supports these activities needs to support and monitor their delivery.

A Windows 95 network, installed when the school opened five years ago, struggled to handle the increasing demands placed upon it. "The Windows 95 environment suited us well enough for a while," says Paul Millington, the Institute's IT manager. "But by the end of last year we were suffering all the problems of distributed computing - no two systems were the same, and we couldn't control users, upgrades or new applications."

On top of this, the PCs' 100Mhz systems were worn out, and insufficient for the students' needs.

Although it was initially planned to upgrade to Windows 98/NT, the Institute was persuaded to go with Windows 2000 after a period of consultation with its partner Computacenter.

"The reasons were to do with security, control of software, managing the students, and control of what went onto the desktops," says Ken O'Donoghue, the Institute's head of learning support. Computacenter provided end-to-end project management, technical design consulting, testing and evaluation. The group also assisted with the implementation of the server technology and systems integration.

A second major factor in the decision to deploy Windows 2000 was the rapid deployment programme. "This offered us an extremely high level of support in the design and implementation, including building a closed pilot to test the system thoroughly before it was migrated to the whole campus," says Millington.

Testing times
A major pressure on the rollout was time - the IT staff had a rigid September deadline since the new technology had to be up-and-running when students returned. A three-day consultation process kicked off the project, where the Institute and Computacenter staff agreed on an architecture for the new system. The next stage was to design the architecture, build a test environment and migrate the existing data to test and refine the system.

The installation was relatively painless, apart from issues of compatibility with the basic elements. "There were problems with things such as reporting and driver compatibilities," he says. "We will have to replace some printers because their drivers, which should have been compatible, turned out not to be," says Millington.

Millington believes the issue is with native drivers which are designed for the US market. "It was a small thing, but it meant that desktops couldn't recognise the printer, and couldn't link it to the server for printing," he says. "It cost us some time, and we will have to replace our Laserjet 4 machines."

Since the new system went live in September 1999, the Institute's technical team has far greater ability to manage access to software, printers and the internet within groups or for individuals. The team also values the ability to facilitate hot-desking using Active Directory. "In the very mobile environment of a university campus, the ability to log on to any PC anywhere on the network and be delivered the desktop and software you need is a tremendous advantage," says Millington.

The most obvious success of the project has been the almost immediate reduction in support needs. "Helpdesk calls, especially about email, have dropped enormously," says Millington. "Where that once accounted for 75 per cent of helpdesk calls, it is now about five per cent." The calls which now dominate the helpdesk's time are common questions from new users, which Millington believes will tail off within a couple of months.

The demands on support staff are lower because the Institute, for the first time, is able to specify an exact configuration for every machine on the network and lock it down. "We can also set individual quotas for each user that limits the amount of disk space they can use and encourage them to maintain good housekeeping, especially of their email," says O'Donoghue.

The Institute has also benefited from one of the lesser-known new features of Windows 2000 - the support it offers for users with special needs. "It offers an extremely comprehensive set of support tools such as narration, zooming and keyboard assistance," says O'Donoghue.

"As it is an Active Directory feature, it means that we only have to set up the configuration for each student once. I can see this being very valuable to any organisation trying to assist their physically challenged staff."

The other major benefit of Windows 2000 for the Institute is that problems can largely be dealt with remotely. "We expect to be able to fix 90 per cent of failures through a combination of remote management and self-healing applications," says Millington. "Once Active Directory is there, the benefits are there for all to see."

Case study two: Bournemouth University
Implementation: Windows 2000 Advanced Server/Terminal Server supporting a network of PCs and thin clients
Partners: NCD, Microsoft, Compaq
Business aims: To reduce support costs and improve performance
Successes: Students prefer the thin clients to PC-based alternatives
Problems: Network performance didn't match the new technology
Lessons learnt: The university has found registry hacks listed on the internet invaluable

Take a user base of 12,000 and an ageing thin-client architecture that won't scale beyond 60 users, and you have a problem.

That's the situation in which the University of Bournemouth found itself last summer, at a time when it was struggling with limited resources and spiralling student numbers.

Despite its best efforts, the IT department wasn't maintaining quality of service, believes Ken Bissell, technical director of academic services. "It is vitally important that we meet the demands of students, deliver reliability and performance, and meet strict budgets - something that was increasingly difficult under the circumstances," he says.

The University selected Windows 2000 as a successor to its existing two-year-old thin-client architecture based on Ntrigue, from Insignia. "The system was old, unreliable, and slow," says Grant Tiller, NT systems administrator at the university. "We were struggling to maintain the 50 supporting servers using just two staff, which was a big stretch."

The final nail in Insignia's coffin came when the company was bought by a rival, and the university saw a reduction in the level of support available. "The commitment placed upon developing the software immediately declined," says Bissell. "This, combined with the fact that we had difficulty scaling the system to support more than 60 users, meant we needed to broaden the thin-client implementation."

Lower support costs
Since installing Windows 2000, the university has already achieved one of its aims - to lower support costs. "We were looking for long-term cost savings," says Tiller. "Windows 2000 gives us lower overheads, less maintenance, lower demands on the helpdesk and ease of management." The university estimates that over the year, savings from Windows 2000 will be equivalent to two full-time members of staff.

The university's new system is based around six Compaq Proliant servers running Windows 2000 Advanced Server with Terminal Server Services. The university also bought 60 NCD ThinStar client desktops and NCD load balancing software to support the university's student cybercafe, which has proved extremely popular and runs using six NCD Thinstar clients, half of which have been sponsored for the students by NCD.

Where the university is still experiencing problems is in the network which supports the thin clients. "We have learnt the hard way that you do need a reliable network to support this stuff," says Tiller. "We found that without a solid backbone it was impossible to handle the client - so we installed new switches and hubs along the backbone."

The university now plans to expand its use of thin clients for the students in the open access program, and is planning to purchase another 100 clients. "We have found that students actually prefer using the thin clients to the PCs because they offer better performance," says Tiller. An additional project is also being considered that will see NCD thin clients rolled out to the university's administration staff.

Case study three: Holmes Place Health Clubs
Implementation: Windows 2000 and Exchange 2000
Partners: Core Technology Partners
Business aims: To allow company-wide communication and messaging
Successes: The rapid scalability which supports expansion
Problems: Beta code failed, and needed to be scrapped and rebuilt
Lessons learned: Manage expectations carefully, particularly as regards rollout timing

The 53 UK health clubs which make up Holmes Place have thus far been a disconnected bunch. Email addresses - and even the choice of internet service provider - are determined by each club manager, and can change at any time. The lack of a central repository of information makes it difficult for the company's management to distribute information.

"One of my team recently wanted to send a message to all the managers, and it took him half-an-hour simply to put in the names," says Ian Takats, the company's group IS manager.

The company's rollout of Exchange and Windows 2000 will create a single global address list and a properly scalable messaging system. "That's our first priority," says Takats. "We don't have an easy way for people to access or post central information at the moment."

Using Exchange 2000, Holmes has created a single global domain, Holmesplace.com, which applies to all staff in the organisation, including the company's 20 European clubs. Not only will this give staff uniform email addresses, but it will allow Takats to create public files with information including health and safety policies, job vacancies and company news.

The remote management features of Windows 2000 will allow the company to manage the system from its head office in Barbican. This should facilitate the fast and efficient disaster recovery of the new mail system if problems occur, and will allow mail sweeping across the whole network to protect against computer viruses.

Remote workers
Windows 2000 allows the company to support remote workers - a feature that becomes increasingly important as the company accelerates its international expansion. "With new clubs in Switzerland, Portugal, Spain, Germany and Austria, we need an infrastructure that can grow with us, that is scalable and will allow us to access information from any location," says Takats.

The new system will be offered to the company's area managers, who travel from club to club and previously relied on multiple email addresses to keep in touch. With Exchange 2000, these staff now have a single address that can be accessed via the web, regardless of their location.

Initially the company will integrate Exchange 2000 and Windows 2000 into existing infrastructure at its head office and a single, remote club. Once the IT team are satisfied with performance, the rollout will then be extended to include a second Windows 2000 and Exchange 2000 server in the company's second admin centre in Kensington. Once the server is successfully integrated, the Kensington users will be migrated onto the new system, followed by clubs across the rest of Europe.

The rollout of the new system was delayed by the wait for final code. Holmes Place was using Windows 2000 RC 2, and had planned simply to roll out and upgrade to final code when it was available - but a bug in the software prevented this. "For some reason, we could get email in, but we were unable to distribute it," says Takats. "Basically, we had to trash and rebuild the whole thing using the final code."

The company isn't planning to roll out Windows 2000 to the desktop, although it may consider it in the future. More immediately, the company plans to use Windows 2000's workflow capabilities to improve ecommerce activities.

With a solid foundation for a full knowledge management system in place, it will shortly begin incorporating a digital dashboard system which will make automated workflow processes possible. "It offers us the security of knowing the information is correct and up-to-date," says Takats.