Certain You're Vista Ready? Serden Technologies Tells You More than Yes or No

Perhaps you've heard variations of at least one of these three questions being asked in the boardrooms, cubicles, and hallways of your organization: When should we deploy Windows Vista? Why should we deploy Vista? How should we deploy Vista? Then there's the question that often doesn't get asked: Can we deploy Vista?

Many vendors stand at the ready to help you figure out when and how you should deploy Vista. Microsoft is ready to help you figure out why you should deploy Vista. And many vendors including Microsoft offer tools that help you determine whether your machines are Vista compatible. But, as Rick Martin, COO of Serden Technologies points out, when he tried those tools, "It was more a hardware assessment. The important factor they were leaving out was the actual usage—the end-user experience." That's where Serden Technologies Windows Vista Migration Readiness Analysis report comes in. Part of Serden's InterAct ES systems management tool, the Vista Migration Readiness report tells you how an actual machine is being used by the end user, including availability, CPU, and memory. The report also tells whether the machine is Vista compatible, and if so, what version of Vista it could run.

Other tools, Martin says, "will tell you if you're Vista capable, but they're very misleading. You might find that a machine is Vista capable but is having some problems. Deploying Vista might not solve those problems and might actually cause more problems." That's why Serden's Vista Migration Readiness report ranks machines as a low, medium, or high risk for migration problems. Depending on the cause of the risk ranking, a company could choose to deploy Vista in stages, first to the low-risk machines and then, after addressing the problems on the high-risk machines, to those machines.

"People don't truly understand how the end users are using their machines to get the job done," Martin says. Serden Technologies' systems management solution views a system from the client side, not the server side, taking raw data back to the business level to show the impact of the individual user and individual machine on the overall effectiveness of the organization.

Serden's InterAct ES solution synchronizes with Active Directory, eliminating the need to redefine organization levels, and a new OLAP component provides IT and non-IT people information such as trend analysis and cost analysis data from the client level. The solution includes features such as the ability to monitor print and USB devices, application and Web usage, and software distribution and licensing, and it can assist with OS imaging and migration. It also offers real-time alerts based on heuristic systems that learn to distinguish between "normal" use and "real" problems and provides the ability to resolve problems remotely.

Although Vista-readiness is a key concern this year for many organizations and IT folk, the tool could be used to analyze a company's readiness for upgrades to other products as well, such as the implementation of SAP software. Additionally, after a deployment or migration occurs, InterAct ES will continue to monitor from the client side to report back on post-upgrade events.  To learn more about InterAct ES and the Windows Vista Migration Readiness Analysis report, see the Serden Technologies Web site at http://www.serden.com.