Windows 2000 Migration A Gradual Process

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February 09, 2001 (10:13 AM EST)

Enterprises planning to adopt Windows 2000 will do so gradually, typically taking six to 12 months to conduct top-down planning and to ensure a smooth migration to Active Directory and other new features.

In many cases, IT departments are setting up a central Windows 2000 infrastructure and leaving implementation timing and other details to individual units.

About half of the 100 IT managers surveyed by InternetWeek say their company will take longer than six months to complete the transition to Windows 2000. While 59 percent plan to transition in less than a year, only 8 percent plan it for less than a month.

The findings aren't all bad for Microsoft (stock: MSFT). The company, which launched the operating system one year ago this week, says it will sell its millionth W2K server license this month. Although uptake has not been swift, some two-thirds of the 100 firms still plan to implement Windows 2000. Many others say they see the transition as inevitable, even though they don't have specific plans in place for making the move.

Microsoft plans this week to demonstrate the next version of Windows 2000, called Windows XP and code-named Whistler.

A Deliberate Approach

General Motors' approach is typical of the deliberateness that large companies are showing. The automotive manufacturer is migrating 110,000 users to Windows 2000 from Novell NetWare, Windows 95, and Windows NT.

GM (stock: GM) started last April with a pilot project of about 1,000 systems and plans to go into production in June; the rollout will not be complete until the end of 2002. The pilot has been used to test Windows 2000's stability, compatibility with existing applications, and satisfaction among end users. So far, the OS has earned high marks in each of these areas, says Mike Adelson, director of global computing infrastructure for GM.

"We're engineering the core product that will go out to all the sites and putting the operational processes and support in place," Adelson says.

A priority for GM was that the rollout didn't reduce productivity. The emphasis, then, was on structure and keeping people informed. "The goal was a lights-out, no-user-intervention process," Adelson says.

Centralized planning is the cornerstone of GM's massive migration. The company is working on a standard Active Directory structure and outfitting PCs with a standard applications set.

Standardizing on a single configuration is intended to save money, make systems easier to support, and provide for easy document sharing across the organization. Also, GM is looking to let users roam to any PC in the company and be able to call up the same configuration, software and data they use on their home desktops, Adelson says.

This roaming capability will be possible with Windows 2000's built-in internationalization features, which enable the operating system to better use different natural languages than previous Windows versions. In addition, Active Directory is key to roaming functionality. It creates a central repository of user-identifying data that can be propagated throughout the enterprise.

For GM and other companies, the Windows 2000 migration is unique in scope. Few software upgrades affect every business aspect, from servers to remote desktops. Because of the stakes, the migration requires special care.

"I'm not interested in being the first guy off the diving board in the pool to see if there's water in there," says John Luludis, CIO of Danzas Air Express International, an airfreight company. Danzas says he plans to take 12 to 18 months to roll out Windows 2000 for 10,000 users on about 500 servers. The company is now planning the migration, and will start implementing changes midyear.

Also moving gradually is Toyota Motor Sales USA, the American sales arm of the Japanese auto giant. Toyota (stock: TM) plans to install Windows 2000 for 10,000 users on about 600 servers. The company has already deployed about 50 servers and will start rolling out desktop systems in the second half of this year.

No completion date has been set. "That's part of what we're trying to figure out in the planning stages," says Toyota Motor Sales USA corporate manager of information systems Doug Beebe. "The Big Bang approach doesn't seem to work for us; the controlled rollout seems to be the right way to go for Toyota."

The level of centralization is an important decision for enterprises to make before the rollout begins. Some companies split responsibilities between the IT department and the individual business units.

"We believe the technology department's role is to build the infrastructure and provide the tools, and then the departments use the infrastructure to deploy apps," says Janet Wejman, senior vice president and CIO of Continental Airlines.

Continental (stock: CAL) started to deploy Windows 2000 when it was still in beta two years ago. It expects to finish deployment to about 5,000 desktops and 500 servers this quarter. It started the rollout on non-critical systems, saving the airport and ticketing systems for last.

"If a server at an airport goes down, you can have 300 people standing in line waiting to get on a 777 and we can't board them," Wejman says. "That's my definition of mission-critical."

Needed For Migration

Experts believe at least some degree of centralized control is essential to a successful Windows 2000 migration. In that sense, it's far more challenging than the last major Windows upgrade, Windows 95. That product was a desktop operating system that could be deployed on individual systems one at a time without affecting other computing resources.

To deploy Active Directory and Windows 2000 successfully, IT managers first need a scheme for switching Windows NT domains to Active Directory consistently across the enterprise, says Meta Group analyst Will Zachmann.

As part of this transition, IT managers need to develop a naming scheme for organizing all users and network resources in Active Directory. Active Directory -- new to Windows 2000 -- is different from the Windows NT directory structure in that the former can be used to manage resources on a global basis across an enterprise, whereas NT directories are organized on a departmental level.

Failing to plan centrally for a Windows 2000 migration, therefore, can result in islands of Windows 2000 users who are unable to communicate with the rest of the organization.

"Simply turning individual departments loose to do whatever they want is not the best way to get maximum benefit from Windows 2000 in the enterprise," Zachmann says.

Auto supplier Dana Corp.'s (stock: DCN) IT department took a central approach to such key issues as the AD domain structure, a naming convention and an overarching security model. The rest was left up to individual divisions.

"We are very anti-centralized. We give people a lot of autonomy to control their own destiny," says Warren Smith, director of Dana's Victor Reinz division, which manufactures car and truck engine parts. The division plans to migrate 600 desktops to Windows 2000, while the entire company will migrate 20,000 users.

Truck manufacturer Paccar (stock: PCAR) also is managing the Windows 2000 transition centrally but leaving execution to individual business units.

Paccar, whose truck lines include Peterbilt and Kenworth, uses software from On Technology to build a master image of the software it wants on its servers. The image will be distributed to master, or "depot" servers located in the company's 15 North American locations. As new servers arrive the master image is downloaded from the depot server to the new servers, says Rob Branson, manager of integration technology for Paccar.

"On Technology allows us to develop the standard here and let the sites do the implementation work," Branson says. Paccar's having a master server image will help keep the migration efficient, Zachmann says. "It's a way of avoiding repetitive tasks."

It's important for big enterprises to strike a balance between creating a centralized framework for Windows 2000 migration, while letting business units control their own applications and, often, implement the actual deployment, says Laura DiDio, an analyst with Giga Information Group.

"Where they can make a business case for autonomy, they should have it, but Windows 2000 is a complex behemoth that is largely untried and untested in a production environment," DiDio says. "You have to have some really tight controls and safeguards."