Windows 7Customer Solution Case Study

Telecommunications Company Upgrades Computers, Improves Start Time 50 Percent

OverviewCountry or Region: LithuaniaIndustry: Telecommunications industry

Customer ProfileTEO LT, AB provides telecommunications services including voice telephony, high-speed Internet, Internet Protocol–based and broadcast television, and IT services to more than 600,000 customers in Lithuania.

Business SituationTEO needed to provide its employees with a high-performance and easy-to-manage operating system that included better data security and enhanced mobile access for remote workers.

SolutionThe company upgraded its data center to support virtualization and deployed Windows 7 Enterprise—plus additional Microsoft products for productivity, security, and communications—to its employees.

Benefits Increases performance Strengthens security Streamlines IT manageability Enhances mobility

“Thanks to Windows 7, we are better positioned to thrive in a competitive marketplace. Our employees spend less time searching for information and more time addressing customer needs.”

Almantas Klimas, IT Manager, TEO

TEO LT, AB, a major Lithuanian telecommunications provider, decided to upgrade to the Windows 7 Enterprise operating system to overcome performance issues, improve data security, and enhance mobile access. It prepared by modernizing its data center with the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system and Hyper-V virtualization technology. TEO began deploying Windows 7 in March 2010. The company uses the Windows PowerShell command-line interface to remotely manage its computer infrastructure. To enhance security, TEO employs Windows 7 features and Microsoft Forefront Client Security. It also is deploying Microsoft productivity and collaboration tools. By May 2011, TEO had completed implementation of the operating system to its employees. The company benefits from better performance, tightened data security, reduced IT workload, and easier network access from mobile computers.

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SituationTEO LT, AB is a public company and the largest provider of broadband Internet access and voice telephony services in Lithuania. Until 2006, was called Lithuanian Telecom and was the only company in the country that delivered fixed-voice services. Later, the company changed its name to TEO and went into competition on the open market. It has more than 600,000 customers.

“The company provides three major types of services,” says Almantas Klimas, IT Manager at TEO. “We provide traditional voice telecommunications services. We provide almost 50 percent of the country’s Internet. We also provide television services including both IP [Internet Protocol]-based television and digital video broadcast terrestrial television.”

TEO is part of TeliaSonera, the largest telecommunications group in Scandinavia and the Baltic states. According to netindex.com, which conducts Internet performance tests around the globe, TEO Internet services in Lithuania typically rate among the top five fastest Internet connection speeds in the world. The company has been rapidly deploying fiber-optic cable lines throughout the country since 2007 and delivering Internet speeds of 300 megabits per second to its customers. About 50 percent of the country’s population has access to fiber optic services.

TEO has 2,000 employees, approximately 15 percent of whom use portable computers; the rest work from desktop computers. TEO has 37 IT staff members,

and it outsources most IT functions to its subsidiary company, Baltic Data Center, which hosts the company’s server environment and manages hardware and software. In 2007, TEO deployed the Windows Vista operating system to most of its workforce. Some of its users were still running Windows XP.

TEO was interested in upgrading to the newest iteration of the Windows operating system to provide its employees with features that would improve performance and productivity. Additionally, the company needed better technological support for its line-of-business (LOB) applications. The most critical applications at TEO include its billing systems and its financial systems.

The company sought to replace the third-party solution it was using to make it possible for users to connect remotely from their mobile computers to the company network by using wireless network, a 3G wide area network, or a virtual private network (VPN). In addition, TEO was looking for ways to better manage and support its computer infrastructure, and to reduce management overhead.

The company also lacked solutions for encrypting and safeguarding data on computers. In particular, it had concerns about employees storing documents with confidential business information on USB drives.

TEO is a forward-looking company that seeks to adopt the most advanced high-performance tools. “TEO has a reputation for delivering some of the best telecommunications services in the world,”

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“For TEO, one of the most important Windows 7 features is BitLocker. We now have the ability to safeguard confidential data. With BitLocker To Go, we remove the possibility of compromising information if USB drives are lost.”

Almantas Klimas, IT Manager, TEO

says Klimas. “We want our employees to have access to the best and the latest technologies so they can be more productive than our competitors.”

SolutionBecause TEO has a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement licensing agreement, which provides Microsoft Software Assurance, the company has the automatic right to upgrade its computers to the newest version of the operating system. “Having the Enterprise Agreement with Microsoft turned out to be a very good decision,” says Klimas. “There was no question about whether we should upgrade because we had the rights to do so and Windows 7 is a very good product. When the operating system became available, we had no reason to delay deployment.”

Data Center PreparationTo prepare its IT environment for the operating system upgrade, TEO standardized its data center to employ the Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise operating system as the basis for running applications. By using this operating system as the foundation for its IT infrastructure, the company can take advantage of virtualization tools—including the Hyper-V virtualization technology—to implement server virtualization.

With Hyper-V virtualization technology, it can consolidate multiple server roles as separate virtual machines running on a single physical machine. In addition, Hyper-V provides improved support for processors and hardware. “We decided to start migrating computers to Windows 7

only after the updated servers were in place,” says Klimas.

IT professionals at TEO use Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 R2 to centrally manage the company’s physical and virtual IT infrastructure while increasing server utilization and resource optimization across multiple virtualization platforms. “Virtualization reduces hardware costs, but you need the proper tools to manage virtual machines,” says Klimas. “Virtual Machine Manager helps administrators automate most of the tasks related to managing virtual machines.”

Operating System DeploymentTwo of the company’s IT professionals have conducted the Windows 7 deployment with support from Microsoft Services Premier Support, which provides TEO with rapid responses to all its solution questions.

During its preparation phase, TEO used the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) to assess its application portfolio and help determine how updating the operating system would affect applications. The company also took advantage of Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010, a comprehensive set of tools that helps automate computer and server deployment. “Our technical staff used Microsoft deployment and application compatibility tools to save time in preparing the proper operating system images,” says Klimas. “Formerly, we had used eight operating system images. For the Windows 7 deployment, we’ve used two images: One is a 32-bit version and the other is a 64-bit version.”

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”Users can start their tasks more quickly with Windows 7. They also can do more complex tasks and have multiple applications running at the same time. These technical quality improvements lead to increased productivity and greater user satisfaction.”

Almantas Klimas, IT Manager, TEO

In March 2010, TEO began a pilot program to test its LOB applications with Windows 7. To do so, it deployed the operating system for 20 groups of test users—one group for each critical application. Each test group had to achieve a successful implementation before the company would start a full-scale rollout. “Most applications passed the pilot program testing without any problems,” says Klimas. “Some applications had issues because of missing drivers or hardware devices. We found workarounds by replacing hardware and finding drivers that worked.”

The company’s biggest challenge during the pilot program was ensuring compatibility with its third-party financial software. It coordinated with the application vendor for four months before finding a solution. Once that compatibility issue was resolved, TEO began deploying the operating system to the rest of its employees. It is using Windows Deployment Services, a technology that’s included with Windows Server 2008 R2, to remotely deploy the operating system using customized images. “The installation of Windows 7 is being done in several simple steps,” says Klimas. “The biggest challenge we face is to find a timeslot in which to upgrade every user. Deployment processes are mostly automatic. We need about an hour with each computer.”

As of May 2011, TEO had completed deployment of the operating system to 95 percent of its computer infrastructure. (The other 5 percent comprises computers used by telephone network management operators, who will continue using Windows XP.)

Features and Tools ImplementationThe company takes advantage of a number of Windows 7 features including Windows PowerShell, a command-line shell and scripting language that IT professionals can use to manage Windows 7 and applications that run on the operating system. Windows PowerShell is built on the Microsoft .NET Framework, software that provides a comprehensive programming model and set of application programming interfaces for building applications and services. The company uses the Active Directory module in Windows PowerShell to centrally administer its directory service. Additionally, it employs the Group Policy Management Console to apply policies that control the work environment of user accounts within Active Directory. “Our IT professionals use Windows PowerShell extensively to do system management tasks,” says Klimas. “It makes it possible for them to perform these tasks remotely.”

TEO uses the BitLocker Drive Encryption feature in Windows 7 Enterprise to encrypt the entire drive on which Windows and the data reside. Once BitLocker is turned on, any file on the drive is encrypted automatically. TEO also uses Bitlocker To Go to safeguard data on portable storage devices such as USB flash drives and external hard drives. To help ensure the security of its computers, TEO replaced third-party antivirus software with Microsoft Forefront Client Security, a product designed to help protect business computers from malicious software (malware).

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TEO is deploying other desktop technologies alongside Windows 7. When it started implementing the operating system, it was already using the Windows Internet Explorer 8 browser, and needed to make only minor fixes to ensure compatibility with its web-based business applications. The company has now moved to Windows Internet Explorer 9. The upgraded TEO data center also supports Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and Microsoft Office Professional 2010 for email and productivity tools and Microsoft Lync Server 2010 communications software for instant messaging, presence, and conferencing tools.

BenefitsTEO employees are embracing Windows 7. Demand has been so strong that many users asked that the operating system be deployed on their computers ahead of schedule. The company benefits from faster performance, tightened security, reduced IT workload, and easier access to the company network from mobile computers. “Thanks to Windows 7, we are better positioned to thrive in a competitive marketplace,” says Klimas. “Our employees spend less time searching for information and more time addressing customer needs.”

Increases PerformanceAs the company’s deployment of Windows 7 progresses, it is noticing that the performance issues associated with previous operating systems have disappeared. “The performance of Windows 7 is trouble free,” says Klimas. “We practically have no need to monitor the operating system.”

With the upgrade, TEO employees are realizing up to 50 percent faster start times. In addition, the 64-bit version of the operating system can access more computer memory. ”Users can start their tasks more quickly with Windows 7,” says Klimas. “They also can do more complex tasks and have multiple applications running at the same time. These technical quality improvements lead to increased productivity and greater user satisfaction.”

Strengthens SecurityThe company uses Forefront Client Security to better protect its computer infrastructure from malware while providing better visibility into and management of security. “By using Forefront Client Security, we have fewer problems with compatibility when service packs and critical patches are released,” says Klimas. “Because we now get this essential malware protection from Microsoft, we avoid conflicts between operating system updates and antivirus updates.”

TEO also benefits greatly from the data encryption features available with the operating system. “For TEO, one of the most important Windows 7 features is BitLocker,” says Klimas. “We now have the ability to safeguard confidential data. With BitLocker To Go, we remove the possibility of compromising information if USB drives are lost.”

Streamlines IT ManageabilityBecause TEO IT professionals can manage systems remotely by using Windows PowerShell, TEO avoids the time and transport costs of sending IT support

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personnel onsite to troubleshoot and configure computers. “Our offices are distributed among 45 locations around the country,” says Klimas. “By using Windows 7 tools to centrally manage computers and deploy business applications, we are able to manage 60 percent more PCs with the same resources.”

In addition, because the operating system interoperates with the .NET Framework, it’s simpler for the company to maintain its LOB applications.

Enhances MobilityFor the mobile computers in its PC infrastructure, TEO is taking advantage of improved tools for connecting to the company network. “Previously, we had to connect mobile users to the company network through third-party solutions, or we’d have to install drivers,” says Klimas. “Now it’s all part of Windows 7 Enterprise. Employees can connect to wireless networks effortlessly by clicking the network icon on the taskbar. The same interface works for a Wi-Fi connection, a VPN connection, or for a 3G wide-area network connection.”Windows 7Works the way you want: Windows 7 will help your organization use information technology to gain a competitive advantage in today’s new world of work.

Your people will be able to be more productive anywhere. You will be able to support your mobile workforce with better access to shared data and collaboration tools. And your IT staff will have better tools and technologies for enhanced corporate IT security and data protection, and more efficient deployment and management.

For more information about Windows 7, go to:www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about TEO products and services, call 370 (5) 262 1511 or visit the website at: www.teo.lt

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published June 2011

Software and Services Windows 7 Enterprise− Windows PowerShell− BitLocker− BitLocker To Go

Microsoft Office− Microsoft Office Professional 2010

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise− Microsoft Exchange Server 2010−

− Microsoft Lync Server 2010− Microsoft System Center Virtual

Machine Manager 2008 R2 Technologies− Hyper-V− Microsoft Application Compatibility

Toolkit− Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010− Microsoft Forefront Client Security