BMW CIO: Three reasons to upgrade to Windows 3

IT168 informational German car manufacturer BMW (BMW) has multiple names on its head: luxury car and motorcycle manufacturers, world-renowned brands, major sports events Sponsor, a large company known for its efficiency. Now, BMW has another name: the early adopters of Windows 7.

The automotive giant headquartered in Munich, Germany employs 100,000 people in 250 locations in several countries around the world, including Germany, South Africa, the United States and China. Its headquarters building is considered Europe. An architectural paradigm. BMW produces an average of between 1 million and 1.5 million cars a year. This huge environment has a total of 85,000 Windows computers, including automotive engineers and sales personnel.

Since 2001, BMW has been running Windows XP in its extensive client environment. Bernhard Huber, the head of BMW's workplace IT system, said that the car manufacturer was very satisfied with XP and abandoned WindowsVista, so it was very early to plan to upgrade to Windows 7.

In addition to all enterprise applications for email, phone and video conferencing, Huber's division is responsible for purchasing, running and supporting all of BMW's devices, such as personal computers, phones and printers. Huber said: "We have long recognized the many advantages of Windows 7 in terms of features and cost savings." He added that BMW first tested Windows 7 beta in the first quarter of this year, since Windows 7 RTM (Release ToManufacturing, mass production) Version) increased the number of test users after the launch at the end of July.

He said: "By the end of 2009, 200 to 500 key users are expected to participate in this test program." Huber mentioned that BMW's IT department will increase the compatibility test in 2010. At that time, there will be 5,000 users in the production environment to test; after that, Windows 7 will be deployed to all BMW machines in 2011, and Windows 7 SP1 (Service Pack 1) may be available at the same time.

Reason one: better user interface, speed and application virtualization and memory management

Huber said that Windows 7 will simplify the work of BMW employees through two aspects, one is to re- The user interface is designed, and the second is improved memory management.

The desktop features of this new operating system (such as the improved taskbar) are often not mentioned as an enterprise advantage. However, Huber expects features like thumbnail previews to improve employee productivity, and thumbnail previews make it easier to switch between applications.

Huber also expects Windows 7 to further improve efficiency through its faster startup time and improved memory management. He said: "Windows 7 uses resources very reasonably, and the application launch speed is quite fast. In this way, upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7 is easier than upgrading to Vista."

Huber added BMW will use XP mode (XPMode), the free virtual machine feature for Windows 7 for businesses that can run applications that can only run on older XP operating systems via the Microsoft virtual machine with the licensed version of Windows XP SP3.

He said: "With the help of application virtualization such as XP mode, no matter what software you have, even if it is not compatible with Windows7, we can continue after we deploy the new operating system. Use. We can migrate legacy applications immediately and get ready to run on Windows 7."