Quite a few businesses have been delaying migrating from either Windows XP or Windows Vista to Windows 7 for various reasons. Some do not want to make the move due to fears of application incompatibility. Others fear the costs to the IT department may be high because of unforeseen difficulties with the migration.

The problem with postponing is that support won't be available forever from either Microsoft or applications on older os's like Windows XP or Windows Vista. New hardware will ultimately emerge without support for legacy operating systems. This is the reason organizations need to get ready for and eventually complete a Windows 7 migration.

How

The first step in carrying out a Windows 7 migration is to make an diagnosis in regards to what issues there may be. You'll want to be sure that all complaints are found. The very first area of problems includes difficulty with applications which are used with the organization.

Another sort of frequent problems are hardware drivers or the lack thereof in Windows 7. Some hardware might be so old and unsupported that they do not possess a related driver that operates in Windows 7. That's a problem that will need to be handled before the migration either with the removal of the hardware, finding a compatible hardware driver, or purchasing alternative hardware suitable for Windows 7.

Optimization

A different subject of headache to many IT departments considering a Windows 7 migration is overall performance. Nobody really wants to complete an operating system up grade with slower performance because of this. Ultimately, the overall performance should be faster following the upgrade to Windows 7. Only proceed with the migration when system performance is acceptable in the new environment.

You can find steps that IT departments can consider to enhance the future Windows 7 environment like ensuring the existing applications are upgraded or patched to a version that supports Windows 7 and by making systems settings that make sense with the applications that are being are powered by the system. This all needs to be decided in a test environment ahead of any migration in production in order to not inconvenience the people.

Maintenance

Once the IT department has done a Windows 7 migration successfully, the eye needs to be placed on setting up some sort of patch management that retains the Windows 7 systems safeguarded and functioning easily. There is always bugs and security conditions that ought to be fixed via patches. You need to have them installed regularly on all Windows 7 systems.

To do patch maintenance by hand would be silly, expensive, and frustrating. It is much better to figure out ways to automate some of the patch management processes so that the Windows 7 systems remain up-to-date with Microsoft's recommended patches. There should also be a place and mechanism to test the patches before pushing them to the production environment. Doing proper patch management can prevent a lot of headaches for the IT department.