TechEd: Tools aim to ease Vista deployment pains

Microsoft Corp. released tools to help companies deploy Windows Vista, acknowledging that enterprise IT managers face deployment and application-compatibility pains when they update business desktops to the new operating system.

The company unveiled the new tools, Data Encryption Toolkit for Mobile PCs and Virtual Hard Drive (VHD) Test Drive, at the TechEd 2007 conference in Orlando today. The first helps IT administrators set encryption policies for corporate laptops using the encrypting file system and new Bitlocker features of Windows Vista, said Stella Chernyak, a Vista product manager at Microsoft.

The second tool is a file that allows companies to run a virtual version of Vista on PCs for a 30-day evaluation period to see how it will interact with other applications in their systems.

The VHD Test Drive is available online, as is the Data Encryption Toolkit.

Corporate adoption of Vista has been a big concern since the operating system was released to business customers last November. Many companies said they would hold off on fully deploying the operating system longer than they usually do, mainly because of concerns about application compatibility.

Indeed, Chernyak acknowledged today in an interview that lack of application compatibility is the biggest challenge business users face when they deploy Vista. She said this is why Microsoft released the Vista Application Compatibility Toolkit simultaneously with the general availability of the operating system instead of some time after, as it has traditionally done. The VHD also gives organizations a chance to see what applications will be affected by the new operating system so they can make compatibility adjustments before investing in Vista.

Three of Microsoft's large enterprise customers, Continental Airlines Inc., Charter Communications Inc. and health care company Cerna Corp., will have major Vista deployments by the end of the year, Chernyak said. Microsoft claims most organizations are on schedule for a full rollout of Vista 12 to 18 months after its release, which is about normal for a new Windows operating systems, she said.

Still, not everyone is rushing to deploy Vista, and smaller companies in particular are wary of adopting the operating system until making certain it will work with everything in their systems.

TechEd attendee Ryan Engh, infrastructure manager at Wasatch Advisors, a 130-person mutual funds company in Salt Lake City, said his company is still about 12 months from beginning a Vista deployment -- though two IT staff members are "playing with it" to see how it will interact with applications in the system.

"We'd be more aggressive if it wasn't such a drastic change in the operating system," he said.

Engh said he was not aware of the new deployment tools from Microsoft, and he added that he likely would not use them anyway because he is currently more concerned with application compatibility than with actually deploying the operating system.