Deploying Windows 2000 Professional

The first step in the deployment process is to assess user needs in your organization and map those needs to the features and benefits that Windows 2000 Professional provides. This will allow you to determine when and how to implement features in your organization.

Assessing user needs means identifying the types of features and applications your users require, such as e-mail, connectivity to the Internet, multimedia applications such as Microsoft NetMeeting, and so on.

To obtain this data, you can solicit feedback from users and management on the type of applications, features, and services they need. You can then use this data to determine the best client configurations for your organization. For example, you can determine how to group users, decide on the amount of disk space they need, and estimate how network traffic might increase if they require applications that use a lot of network bandwidth, and so on. For additional detail on defining company needs, see Introducing Windows 2000 Deployment Planning in the Deployment Planning Guide.