For many organizations, the number of desktop images maintained ranges from excessive to out of control. Years of application
and version proliferation along with multiple operating system deployments have been accommodated by creation of departmental
images and manual install processes. While streamlining the imaging and packaging process may provide the greatest financial
benefit to the organization, the cost and lead time to fix the problem is high. Three primary initiatives are required to
reach the objective of a single "Gold Image" and bare metal deployment: Application Rationalization, Imaging and
Packaging.
Application Rationalization is the processes of reducing the absolute
number and versioning of currently deployed applications to determine the subset that must be packaged for the target OS environment.
In addition to minimizing packaging cost, application reduction reduces overall complexity and application license cost. Application
rationalization associates application profiles to organizational units, ultimately allowing Active Directory to drive subsequent
layering of packaged application installs over the base (Gold) image. Application configuration detail is also collected during
this initiative to provide packaging direction.
Image
architecture and design results in the creation of a standardized, hardware-independent base image that supports a bare metal
install process. The base image includes all standard, corporate wide components including a fully configured and locked down
target OS, remote access solution, security solution, discovery, patch, software distribution and remote control solution,
virtualization solution, and common office productivity solution.
Packaging
prepares applications for zero touch deployment using Windows Installer. A structured approach for preparing applications,
resolving OS and environment conflicts and enforcing corporate standards can reduce deployment time up to 50% and reduce support
costs hundreds of dollars per PC each year.
These three
initiatives are necessary to architect the target PC Stack including the requisite drivers, Policy, Business Applications
and Data components that are layered on top of the base image during a zero touch deployment process. ECS can improve utilization
of existing tools, help select new tools and address the myriad of design and configuration considerations that must be addressed
during the design process as follows:
Once the PC Stack is architected, cost reduction is enhanced through
deployment and management of desktops, notebooks, and thin clients by remotely installing software from a centralized console
environment. The solution should include Zero Touch OS deployment and configuration, PC "personality" migration,
and software deployment across hardware platforms and OS types. A centralized deployment solution helps reduce end-user downtime
by automating the deployment process and increases IT efficiency through zero touch processes that are automated and repeatable.
The deployment solution allows centralized installation and configuration of department specific software as well as the migration
of user-specific data and settings to new computers. IT policies such as Roaming Profiles, Shared Home Directory Folders and
Encrypted Storage Devices for end user data backup must be developed in concert to complete the new target environment.
This architecture supports Desktop Virtualization which should be evaluated
to further reduce the Total Cost of Ownership of the desktop environment. Virtualization can provide significant hardware
saves for applicable business functions but does little to reduce labor or software costs without sophisticated, centralized
management tools.
