Windows 11 Transformation Journey – A Seamless Migration With Riverbed | Aternity in Four Easy Steps
- By Ariane Paguia
- 30-Mar-2022
Microsoft released Windows 11 to the public on 5th October last year with many exciting new features and security enhancements. Many organizations are planning or are currently executing an enterprise-wide transition to Windows 11. Let’s take some time to get familiar with the technology, what it means for your organization and how you can plan for the transition. After all, you do not want to risk missing out on the benefits of Windows’s 11 but also need to avoid impacting user productivity and business continuity.
Security benefits of Windows 11
A massive push for organizations to enable a remote workforce and fast-tracked digital transformation initiatives have left many vulnerable to cyber-attacks. Fortunately, new features from Windows 11 are raising the bar for security. Microsoft’s latest software adopts the Zero Trust model to protect enterprise customer data and ecosystems. These enhanced security features also mean that there might be a need to upgrade existing PC hardware to run Windows 11. In fact, our State of Digital Experience Q1 2022 report found that one-third of enterprise devices will need to be replaced or upgraded in order to run Windows 11.
Planning your Windows 11 transition
Enterprise-wide Windows 11 upgrades can be a massive undertaking, and if you do not have end-to-end visibility of the entire process and how it impacts your end-users, then your transition can quickly become overwhelming. The key lies in smart planning; using data-driven actionable insights will provide critical support during your transformation journey. Armed with insights from planning to execution to completion stages, your transition will be a lot smoother, cost-efficient and less disruptive.
Whether you choose to wait it out or want to get going already, you will have to upgrade to Windows 11 at some point. However, you can take steps to streamline the transition and make it relatively straightforward. There are specialized tools that can help you gain the visibility you need for a seamless transition, like the Digital Experience from Riverbed | Aternity.
Our Digital Experience takes a four-step approach to migration, which helps achieve end-to end-visibility of your transformation program. It also delivers key insights into user experience post-migration.
Riverbed | Aternity’s four-step approach
We are setting a higher bar for endpoint digital experience management when migrating to Windows 11 with Riverbed | Aternity.
Step 1: Plan
We have discussed planning for a Windows 11 transition in a detailed blog post here. To summarize, the focus here is to get a holistic view of your asset inventory and understand how it affects your bottom line. With the help of Riverbed | Aternity, you can establish your organization’s readiness for the upgrade.
- Identify if the hardware is compatible with Windows 11 minimum system requirements. For example, if Jane Doe from accounting is using her laptop since she joined the company six years ago, her machine may not meet Windows 11 requirements. This means her IT team needs to check each device across business functions to see if they meet the minimum system requirements of Windows 11; if not, they will be recommended for device replacement/upgrade.
- Establish a baseline to compare user experience with the current Windows 10 device. This baseline will help compare how Jane Doe is adjusting to the new user interface (UI) and if she is able to carry on with her daily job activities without any hiccups.
- Understand which PCs and business functions are running legacy/non-Windows 11 supported applications. For example, does Jane Doe use Internet Explorer to run an accounting application? Windows 11 does not support Internet Explorer, so Jane will have to use the application in another browser, and we need to understand if the application will be compatible with that new browser.
Step 2: Execute
Once you know what your asset inventory looks like, form a small pilot user group with users pooled from various business functions and upgrade their PCs to Windows 11. Test all the applications used across business functions and monitor the OS performance for users in the pilot group.
- Replace old PCs with those compatible with Windows 11 and/or upgrade OS on pilot devices.
- Track the deployment of Windows 11 OS and required drivers on nominated pilot group devices. You can see the device names, usernames, upgrade date for all pilot users and the total number of devices migrated in a snapshot.
- Run suitable self-updating tasks on the endpoint devices to ensure they’re Windows 11 ready.
Step 3: Validate
Compare User Experience and Device Health between the Windows 11 pilot group and current Windows 10 users. Once validated, roll out Windows 11 to users across business functions in a phased approach. Riverbed | Aternity reports metrics such as Resource Utilization, App Response Time, Stability Index and App Crashes, empowering the IT team to weed out issues at the granular level for every device in the network.
Step 4: Communicate
Now that you have rolled out Windows 11 to most of the users in your organization, it is time to take stock of the transformation project and share insights with various stakeholders.
- Share project progress, failures, and successes with management
- With Riverbed | Aternity, you can also compare your own organization’s Windows 11 user experience with that of your peers globally or within your industry
Why choose Riverbed | Aternity Digital Experience Management (DEM) platform?
The Riverbed | Aternity Digital Experience Management (DEM) platform goes beyond endpoint management to contextualize data across every enterprise endpoint, application and transaction to inform remediation, drive down costs and improve productivity. Riverbed | Aternity has more of what matters to help enterprise users migrate to Windows 11 and beyond:
- End-user experience monitoring
- IT service benchmarking
- Application and desktop performance monitoring
- User journey intelligence
It will be a mammoth task for enterprise IT teams to migrate devices to Windows 11, but the benefits of the new OS make the effort well worth it. Change can be difficult, but Riverbed | Aternity makes your transformation journey easier.
Before your organization decides to kick off the transition to Windows 11, speak with a Riverbed | Aternity consultant to help you plan your strategy for a seamless migration.