Vista Deployment

Now that Vista SP1 has been released it is time for organisations to start to roll out a Vista desktop.

Vista has several features you need to consider in planning your deployment:

1. User Account Control (UAC) isolates the desktop session of a user from administrative actions. You will need to test your desktop and your management systems to make sure they work correctly with UAC.
2. BitLocker provides full disk encryption to protect the data if, for example, a laptop is stolen. However BitLocker operates from a small second partition on the hard drive, and this needs to be created when Vista is installed. Also, BitLocker is designed to work best with a hardware Trusted Platform Module (TPM). So you need to plan ahead and decide whether to use BitLocker or not.
3. Vista user profiles are incompatible with previous versions of Windows. You will need to migrate user data and settings. You can use a migration tool, or you can redirect folders from the current profile to make them accessible in Vista.
4. Vista now has native support for smart cards. Time to strengthen your user account authentication.
5. A new set of Group Policy Preferences enables you to replace many aspects of startup and logon scripts for desktop customisation.

We can help you with your Vista rollout. We can automate the OS image deployment and the software distribution, and help you configure the desktop with Group Policy.

If you would like more information about upgrading to Windows Vista please contact us.