DELL delivers experience, products and service, products and services to help businesses and intitutions immediately reap benefits of WINDOWS 7

* New fixed-scope consulting services for fast, impactful Windows 7 migration
* Migration solutions utilizing Dell’s patented deployment services can reduce deployment time and cost helping companies realize benefits of Windows 7 more quickly
* Commercial desktops and laptops ready for Windows 7

In advance of the worldwide launch of Windows 7 next week, Dell is unveiling a new series of Windows 7 consulting, management and support services to help companies and organizations better prepare migration plans to the new operating system. The consulting and services offerings are designed to help businesses of any size efficiently migrate to Windows 7 with fixed-scope consulting engagements to help them save money and time.

The company also announced that Dell Latitude laptops, Dell OptiPlex desktops and Dell Precision workstations are ready to ship with Windows 7 on Oct. 22. Dell also said that it would begin taking preorders of commercial laptops and desktops with Windows 7 installed beginning Oct. 18.

The News:

Best Practices for Windows 7 Deployment

Dell has designed, deployed and supported select customers in Windows 7 early adopter programs including Baker-Tilly, Betfair and Hoover City Schools. In addition, Dell currently has more than a thousand Windows 7 pilot users internally. The Dell Global Services organization documented these early migration experiences to enhance its consulting and services offerings with key learnings, proven methods and reference architectures that customers will benefit from as they consider migrating to the new operating system.

Windows 7 Readiness Consulting

Dell’s Windows 7 Readiness Assessment helps organizations understand the requirements and challenges of migrating to a new platform and jointly creates a plan to efficiently deploy Windows 7. Part of the Dell ProConsult services portfolio, the new assessment service uses electronic discovery, Web-based surveys, best practices, comparative data and reference architectures for a short, effective consulting engagement.

Dell works with customers to assess if their systems are capable of running Windows 7, which applications are being used and which are compatible with Windows 7. Ensuring application compatibility is critical to a smooth migration, especially for browser-based applications, and Dell can assist customers in compiling and creating an inventory, assessment, remediation, and finally packaging and deployment of a solution. Dell also helps customers understand the impact of migrating on critical business processes, end users, as well as server and network infrastructures. Using the results of the assessment, Dell works with customers to design an implementation plan, including providing training for end-users & IT support staff.

Dell services are fine-tuned to address the specific IT pain points of OS migrations and have significant, proven experience in OS and data migrations. Dell patented technologies can help provide scalable and simplified image management, increased end user productivity and satisfaction, visibility and velocity of problem resolution, and process and tool flexibility for both deployment of new systems and re-deployment of existing assets.

These services are available through Dell and members of Dell’s Partner Direct program.

Commercial Laptops and Desktops Ready for Windows 7

Dell’s announced that its line of OptiPlex desktops, Latitude laptops and Dell Precision workstations are tested and compatible with Windows 7. In addition, the company offers drivers for many of its laptops and desktops so that volume license customers can deploy or test them in their IT environment. Dell will offer commercial laptops and desktops with Windows 7 beginning Oct. 22 and will begin to take pre orders on Oct. 18.

It’s well documented that the current economic environment has led to a very frugal approach to IT spending. However, keeping laptops and desktops in circulation for more than four years can lead to higher maintenance and energy costs and can reduce employee productivity. According to IDC, IT organizations may be incurring operating costs as much as 20.5 percent higher than necessary to acquire, manage and decommission their desktop and notebook PC equipment when comparing tightly managed three-year life cycles with less systematic, longer-span life cycle management strategies.[1]

Also, J. Gold Associates says that keeping a laptop in circulation for years four and five can cost organizations $9,600 in lost end-user productivity and the cost to fix a laptop not under warranty can reach $1,425. [2]

To provide evidence of lost employee productivity, Dell commissioned a performance study that compares current Latitude laptops products to similar models that are three and four years old. Examples of the results include:

* The battery life of a Latitude E4300 laptop running Windows 7 lasts up to 85 percent longer than a Latitude D620, a 3-year-old system, running Windows XP.[3]
* The Latitude E6400 running Windows 7 offers up to 63 percent better performance than a Latitude D620 running Windows XP.[4]
* With a Dell Latitude E6400 E-family laptop you can reduce boot time by up to 29% compared to a previous generation Latitude laptop[5]

Quotes

“We’re pushing the boundaries with the number of transactions we’re processing through our website. Our IT environment has to be reliable. We were confident that the benefits of moving to Windows 7 would improve our business, and that the combined input of Dell and Microsoft would make the project a success. The deployment and migration process went perfectly. And now we have more time to spend on strategic work to further improve the tools available to Betfair staff.” - Ian Burgess, Head of Microsoft and Data Centre Platforms at Betfair

“Response to Windows 7 from our staff and students has been great since we started the roll out on our Dell Latitude XT tablets and 2100 netbooks. Working with the Dell Services and Microsoft team made the migration easy and manageable. We’re really looking forward to seeing how Windows 7 will help drive greater efficiencies within our district.” -- said Keith Price, chief technology officer of Hoover City Schools, Birmingham, Alabama.

“With Windows 7, we want to deliver technology to help customers grow their business and reduce their IT costs with the technology that is easy to deploy, manage and use. We are seeing customers realize this value today as they deploy Windows 7. We know this is important to Dell as well, as evidenced by the readiness programs they are rolling out to support Windows 7 deployments and migrations.” – Rich Reynolds, general manager of commercial marketing for the Windows Business Group at Microsoft Corp.

“We hear consistently around the world that Dell customers are excited about the pending release of Windows 7, but many are unsure a bout when and how to migrate to the new platform. Some are concerned because deploying a new client platform historically requires a significant investment of time and resources. To help customers ease and streamline the process, Dell is leveraging our own extensive experience with client migration and refresh to deliver efficient migration, management and support for Windows 7. The end result is Dell has the right products and services to help businesses assess, plan and deploy Windows 7 and capture the benefits of the latest technology.” – Don Mann, vice president and general manager, Dell Global Services