Hey everyone from GMT +1.  The System Center team is sitting at a very early breakfast in Amsterdam this morning, looking outside at the 6” of new snow that fell overnight.   We are here this week to talk about Windows deployment, with some of our biggest customers in Europe, let alone the world.

We have spent 2 days talking to our colleagues about their Windows 7 planning and rollout, and some trends came up that were common to most of the participants.  This morning on CIO.com Shane O'Neill also posted an article on lessons learned from Windows 7 early adopters.  In the article, he speaks of the early experience BMW has had with Windows 7 and provides their top 5 lessons learned.

“German car giant BMW, in the midst of a massive migration from Windows XP to Windows 7, shares five key upgrade tips for enterprises. Here's their advice on preparing for a smooth journey.”

• Make application compatibility the first priority
• Use SCCM (System Center Configuration Manager) for image creation and deployment.
• Start with basic group policy settings but then update
• Work with ISVs early and often
• Align Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 deployment timing

It was interesting to see parity from our other customers here, that similar experiences are broadly creating trends of focus.  Look to this blog for a series of future postings on these 5 topics, where we will include demos, and more.

Thanks for reading

Jeff Wettlaufer 
Sr. Technical Product Manager
System Center