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Running Head: MIGRATION TO WINDOWS 8.1

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MIGRATION TO WINDOWS 8.1

Migration to Windows 8.1 Student Name Course Title Professor Institution Affiliation Date

Introduction

Several opportunities and benefits that Crescent Manufacturing Inc. is set to achieve after implementing the decision of migrating its operating systems from Windows 7 to Windows 8. Likewise, some potential challenges such as compatibility issues can come up that might result in higher budgets for the project and even lead to longer downtime (Wilson, 2013). Since the project is to involve all the computers and devices at Maryland, Texas, and Nebraska, a proper project design and analysis of the impacts is necessary. The operations department of the organization depends on the applications installed on the personal computers. This is the ultimate need to ensure that analysis of opportunities, weaknesses, strengths and threats for the migration is performed. This report is, therefore, aiming at providing a detailed information on the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the migration. It will also provide an upgrade plan for the organization. The recommendations are documented for the Chief Finance Officer and Chief Information Officer to review before making the migration decision.

SWOT Analysis

This section will provide the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that the organization is likely to face when migrating from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1.

Strengths

a. Improved Encryption in Windows 8.1 is an advantage for the organization to secure the Finance systems, operations, payroll information, and customer and employee information. BitLocker utility is one of the powerful tools in Windows 8.1 that can help in the encryption that makes the UEFI systems booting safer and free from malware infection (Habs & Estuary, 2003).

b. Increased Speeds: Windows 8.1 has a shorter boot time than Windows 7. Windows 8.1 also enhances the performance of the installed application and this will increase the speeds particularly at the operations department that makes use of the applications installed on computers. In fact, Windows 8.1 has an average boot time of 10-15 seconds while Windows 7 has a longer average boot time, more than 30 seconds (Wilson, 2013). Additionally, Windows 8.1 will provide the organization with abilities to increase the speeds depending on the SSD that the company has. The practice will allow employees to spend more time to perform business related activities and increase their productivity.

c. Availability of more enterprise features in the new Operating System is a major strength for the organization to achieve competitive advantage in the provision of home furnishings. Windows 8.1 has more enterprise features that the company can use to accommodate other devices like mobile phone, iPads and remote laptops (Thurrott, 2013). The features can also help implement safer authentication techniques like biometrics because the organization can implement biometric scanners.

d. The revamped architecture of Windows 8.1 is a strength to increase the performance of the systems and even installed applications thus reducing the wastage of resources.

e. User experience is better in Windows 8.1 as compared to Windows 7. The radical changes to the screens on Windows 8.1 will provide the company with an advantage of implementing the operating system to mobile devices unlike the Windows 7 that has a poor UI for smaller screens.

Weaknesses

a. Windows 8.1 user interface and usage of other utilities require employees to have adequate knowledge. It is therefore clear that training of employees is necessary after or before the migration to make the employees comfortable with the usage of the new User Interface and system utilities (Habs & Estuary, 2003). The training may slow either the production process or increase downtime or both.

b. It is not easy to migrate all the personal computers and devices in all the offices from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1 through the typical upgrade because of incompatibility. The organization may require additional utilities that might lead to additional costs to the organization. There is also need to consult with the third parties as vendors of various OS upgrade services and systems thus incurring extra costs. Licensing of the new operating system is also an added cost.

c. High incompatibility issues of Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 regarding legacy applications exist. To resolve the issues, there is need to incur more downtime and related financial losses.

Opportunities

a. The organization has a very high possibility of improving its productivity and make the operations better. Windows 8.1 has enterprise solutions and utilities to support the CMI’s business operations.

b. Windows 8.1 will provide the organization with more security options such as biometrics and encryption. There is also an opportunity for the company to expand its operations in the future to accommodate security-dependent operations (Habs & Estuary, 2003).

Threats

a. Windows 8.1 upgrade from Windows 7 can result in loss of useful information and applications. Incompatibility issues pose a threat of losing information for the organization.

Migration Approach and its Justification

Phase-in migration technique is preferable for the migration process. In this approach, the devices and personal computers will need upgrading from one location to another. It is preferable that the Maryland office or Nebraska office to be the first to undergo the migration and the Headquarter office will be the last to have the migration done. This process is convenient because it will avoid loss of data and minimize downtime costs. All the information can be backed up easily in the other location as one location undergoes Windows migration (Thurrott, 2013). The backup process will involve duplication of files, applications, and data in one location and copy them to another office. It is after proper installation that the information will require reinstallation and the process continues to the second location and then the headquarter office will be the last.

During the upgrade of the headquarter offices, Maryland office will serve temporarily as the new headquarters until the upgrade is complete to minimize downtime costs and enhance the flow of activities.

The phase-in migration approach will also involve the use of upgrading utilities from trusted vendors. The process can help to reduce the chances of having to lose information during the migration. In whichever case, the information requires retrieval from the other location. The ability of retrieval provides an advantage and justification of using the phase-in approach in large organizations like Crescent Manufacturing Inc. (Microsoft Corporation, 2012). Furthermore, the phase-in technique will take into consideration the finer details of the processor specification and ensure applications that are not compatible with 64-bit or 32-bit processors are functional.

Migration at Texas Main Offices

The current state of the Texas main office involves 250 users. All the users’ computers in this location have their machines installed with Windows 7 Operating System. The clients and their application are compatible with Windows 8.1 while the servers run on Windows Server 2012. There is also Active Directories domain services. There is need to upgrade the 50 salespersons’ mobile devices that they use from their homes. The salespersons’ team need to replace their mobile devices from the iOS 7 and implement Windows 8.1. After the migration of these devices, the laptops will also need migration from Windows 7 and other operating systems to Windows 8.1. The following is the migration summary:

Personal computers (clients): 250

Home office devices like personal computers: 50

Mobile devices including iPads: 50

Total number of devices = 300

Phase-in migration at department level

The Texas office contains staff with over ten years of experience hence making the process easier and faster. The employees with adequate knowledge in Microsoft products divide themselves into groups of two and conduct the upgrade in one department after the other to avoid longer downtime. The first sector to undergo migration is Administration Department. Then the marketing department, operations department, finance department, Information Technology department and the other department's migrations will follow in that order (Microsoft Corporation, 2012).

Duration for the Texas Migration

Other employees will also be required to help so that the timeline for the process can be low. Therefore, the estimated duration might vary depending on the number of staff members who will help in the migration. The estimated timeline for the upgrade is five days. The estimation is based on the assumption that only the ten skilled IT persons will be involved to perform the migration on the 300 devices with each employee upgrading six devices each day. However, other factors may make the duration longer. Some of the factors include power blackouts and low employee turn-up. Therefore, the realistic time for the upgrade is seven days.

Maryland Office Migration

This location has 175 clients hence making the total number of the devices to be 175. The migration will also be done using a phase-in approach. Each of the members involved in performing the migration from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1 will use the upgrading software (Windows, R, Vista, Xp, & Server, 2010).

The phase-in approach will see the plant manager office upgraded the first. The Human Resource department will be next, and the last one will be the line supervisor’s sector. The migration process will focus on the operations of the organization to avoid disruption of the activities and information loss.

Duration of Maryland Upgrade

The Information Technology in this location has very few staff hence need to insource from the other regional offices liked Texas and Nebraska. The department also does not have adequate skills in Microsoft products hence the number of devices migrated in a day will be fewer than in the Texas office. Eight days will be required for the upgrade if the consideration of only two employees from the Texas office will be involved together with the IT staff at Maryland. If more factors get consideration, the realistic time is ten days.

Nebraska Office migration

The smallest offices among the three offices of Crescent Manufacturing Inc. is Nebraska office because it has 25 devices for the upgrade and very few employees. The devices are compatible with Windows 8.1 hence there is not much time required to check for compatibility and perform troubleshooting (Thurrott, 2013).

Phase-in approach is ideal for the migration at the departmental level because of the need to reduce downtime costs and risk of information loss. The migration process will be done at the line supervisor department first. The production line section will be next, and the manufacturing department is last. This order should be followed strictly to avoid interference with the business operations and flow of activities (Thurrott, 2013).

Duration for Nebraska Migration

The Information Technology in this location has very few staff just like in the Maryland office hence need to insource from the other regions liked Texas and Maryland. The IT department also does not have adequate skills in Microsoft products hence the number of devices migrated in a day will be fewer than in the Texas office. Eight days will be required for the upgrade if the consideration is made that only two employees from the Texas office will be involved together with the IT staff at Nebraska. If more factors get consideration, the realistic time is ten days.

Testing the Critical Application

The approach to be used the Information Technology department to test the critical application is the black box testing with the implementation of decision table technique. In this testing approach, the information technology staff will select some inputs and test them to check if they yield the desired output. Regardless of the input-output transformation, the tester will have a major concern on the functionality of the business applications. The logic of the application is also part of the main emphasis in this testing technique (Brown, Kölling, McCall, & Utting, 2014).

Securing Laptops and Tablets

Security of laptops and tablet is important because it will help protect the information of the organization when the devices access the network resources of the organization. Three best practices are necessary to ensure the security of the laptops and tablets:

a. Making use of BitLocker utility to encrypt resources: laptops and tablets can get lost or unauthorized users use them. In this case, BitLocker will ensure that unauthorized persons do not access the critical information of the organization by encrypting folders and files with the organizational information. BitLocker utility automatically detects the change in BIOS and encrypts the entire Disk space volume thus securing contents (Habs & Estuary, 2003).

b. Making use of data recovery agent in all laptops: the network is already in support of the AD domain services hence the IT staff can create a Data Recovery Agent accounts for the tablets and laptops to back up the information. Additionally, the information will be protected through encryption hence secure recovery (Habs & Estuary, 2003).

c. Making use of Remove Wipe tool: implementing this tool is a best practice because it allows resetting of the tablets and laptops' setting to factory mode. The utility allows remote default setting thus securing the information of the organization even after the loss of the devices (Thurrott, 2013).

Pros and Cons of AppLocker

a. Management of users is easy because it allows monitoring of users and determining the application that they can access, execute and run (Habs & Estuary, 2003).

b. It ensures easy file identification. AppLocker can help determine the name of files and applications, version, license and other details.

c. Convenient is the selections of rules and configuration. AppLocker is easy in and fast in setting rules because of inclusion of filenames, publisher, hash and other relevant information of the files and applications to be restricted (Thurrott, 2013).

The list below shows the cons of AppLocker:

a. Security compromise is possible. The support for applets and consoles is not the best thus leading to few vulnerabilities that an attacker can exploit to access the restricted files and information. For example, the attacker can launch snap-ins quikly and exploit the system (Microsoft Corporation, 2012).

Managing Applications

The issues voiced by the CIO are taken care of in the Windows 81 environment. Group policy is one of the ways that the Information Technology department can use to ensure that the control of applications through the Windows store is possible and effective. Some configurations are required to ensure proper functionality and solve the issues from the CIO. The WAN and LAN abilities should support the application management (Habs & Estuary, 2003). Managing applications need the following options:

a. A configuration policy option to allow the scheduled updated from the Windows store while blocking or disabling other installations (Windows et al., 2010).

b. An option to configure the Group Policy, so that allows installation of update when the dialog box is only in the shutdown mode. Alternatively, the IT staff can disable default option and enable old client applications to undergo updating while new applications fails from the installation process.

c. The last option is to have the automatic update through the Intranet Microsoft services where certain applications are allowed to be installed for the three locations (Windows et al., 2010).

In conclusion, Windows 8.1 presents many opportunities that the organization should leverage and gain the competitive advantage. There are also significant issues that the operating system addresses. Security of the organizational information is one of the issues solved. AppLocker, BitLocker and other utilities are also available in the new operating system hence making the organization have an opportunity to expand into operations that are very dependent on the network security (Thurrott, 2013). Through there are some threats and weaknesses, the organization is justified to migrate from Windows 7 to Windows 8.1.

References

Brown, N. C. C., Kölling, M., McCall, D., & Utting, I. (2014). Blackbox. In Proceedings of the 45th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education - SIGCSE ’14 (pp. 223–228). https://doi.org/10.1145/2538862.2538924

Habs, I., & Estuary, S. R. (2003). 8.1 Introduction. Methods, 246–266. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1861-6

Microsoft Corporation. (2012). A history of Windows - Microsoft Windows.

Thurrott, P. (2013). Windows 8.1 Tip: Use System Image Backup, SuperSite for Windows, 1–9.

Wilson, P. (2013). A forensic comparison: Windows 7 and Windows 8. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses, 113.

Windows, D., R, W. S., Vista, W., Xp, W., & Server, W. (2010). Microsoft Deployment Toolkit. Office, 2010–2010.