Remote Installation Of Patches, Bug Fixes, Upgrades

Overview

A large multinational company  (split into regions) with approximately 4500 PCs was given the task of standardising the desktop of all computers across the UK, which this region was tasked with doing some 2000.

Detail

This project task involved bug fixes, patches, windows updates, application updates, standard wallpaper/screen saver and Service Packs. The total list of jobs came to about 4 pages of A4! To implement this project would have been simplified had some form of systems management being used but sadly at the time of the implementation project no such system existed within the network and the WAN infrastructure was not suitable in all cases to deploy such large amounts of data; this provided some challenges on how the project should proceed.

Solutions (theirs & ours)

The initial solution was to use manpower to visit every  PC and manually introduce all the patches & fixes etc. this was on average taking 3 hours per PC and one IT staff member could perhaps do two PC at once.

On being presented with this problem axon set about to streamline the process, bear in mind that there were no automated software deployment systems available and neither were there going to be any during the project life. Axon took each patch, fix & application etc examined them and provided a logical order for install (i.e. patch 02 couldn't be installed before patch 01 etc). Once this phase was complete a DOS batch file was written to guide and automate the entire process of deployment. The main files were placed on distribution servers or PC's across the network therefore, allowing multiple install to occur at any given time, this meant that one member of staff (who needn't be IT skilled) could run up to about 10 installs simultaneously. It was also possible to run the file remotely using remote administration tools without travelling to remote sites. The batch file could not run completely unattended as decisions had to be made dependant on the patch or fix level of the PC but it meant that large portions of the update could run for protracted periods without user input. One PC could take about 1 hour.

Metric of success

Axon managed to reduce the cost and timescales down immensely. If we just measure time on a per user - per PC basis axon reduced the install time by 50%, but factor in that the automated batch file could do a department at a time (some 10 PCs) by one man with little IT skills the cost saving becomes very large indeed. We could talk figures and money saving here but they are just subjective numbers; but time savings are easily measurable here - a project that could have taken 2 years to complete could be completed in 6-8 months now.