Executive Summary

Article
03/05/2008

Woodgrove Bank is a leading global investment bank that serves institutional, corporate, government and individual clients in its role as a financial intermediary. Its business includes securities underwriting, sales and trading, financial advisory services, investment research, venture capital, and brokerage services for financial institutions. Woodgrove Bank prides itself on a first-rate information technology (IT) infrastructure and staff. As a fast-paced company with exceptional growth, Woodgrove has established many procedures to make its IT operations efficient and seamless. However, with increasing security threats, network attacks from computer viruses and worms, and ever-present cost and efficiency concerns, Woodgrove is seeking a solution to these issues that will maximize investments into IT resources and infrastructure as well as increase Return on Investment (ROI). When analyzing the IT practices of Woodgrove Corporation, it is important to point out that many processes in place resulted in organic growth and that these processes have become in many ways easier to manage than industry best-practice solutions. Growing needs to remain a lean organization in conjunction with recent advancements in data transfer and storage have made it is necessary for Woodgrove to adopt procedures that automate daily operations. This automation will improve desktop standardization, which in turn will lead to reduced systems complexity, more efficient IT management, and dramatically improved computer and data security.

Following discussions with key stakeholders in the company, a clear requirement has been established to standardize IT operations and the management of depreciable assets. The objective is to enhance the efficiency, value, scalability, and security of IT operations on a global scale. Additionally, the bank wants to put in place several key solutions targeted at smaller, regional operations.

To achieve these objectives, a migration from the current multiple-operating-system environment to an enhanced Windows Vista™ environment will be necessary. Windows Vista has been designed for ease of deployment, improved management, higher reliability, single-image multilingual capabilities, reduced installation time, increased mobility, and improved security features. By including the 2007 Microsoft® Office system as part of a layered image approach, manageability and productivity will also improve. The proposed environment will serve as the foundation for growth and facilitate a future transition into a better managed desktop environment. The investments proposed will satisfy deployment objectives and introduce new tools and processes that will be reused for ongoing new-hire desktop provisioning, eliminating desktop troubleshooting time, and centrally managing corporate standard desktop images and underlying components. These tools and processes will produce a standardized desktop environment, which will dramatically reduce total cost of ownership per desktop, increase security levels, and improve Woodgrove’s ability to deploy new technologies.

The guidance provided by Microsoft Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) will be used to carry out this project. BDD provides best-practice prescriptive guidance for all steps required to perform successful zero touch deployments as well as providing the foundation for improved desktop management operations for the entire computer lifecycle. Zero touch capabilities allow for the deployment of new operating systems without a technician having to physically touch the computers targeted for upgrades. These tools standardize the desktop environment by deleting components of legacy operating systems, applying a corporate standard desktop environment (or image), and reapplying the user’s original documents and settings. This process makes deployment predictable, reduces service desk calls related to migrations, and ensures users are immediately productive after the new desktop is installed. BDD incorporates and integrates current technologies with comprehensive best-practice guidance.

This document highlights an approach standardizing the critical operation of computer desktop deployment for all activities, from planning and building to deploying and operating. Plans and technologies for improving security and maximizing hardware asset utilization are identified. A complete outline of resource requirements and investment returns is also included in this document.

Executive Summary

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