Customer Solution Case Study
/ Global Company Optimizes Performance, Security, Management with Operating Systems
Overview
Country or Region: Turkey
Industry: Professional services—IT services
Customer Profile
Turkey-based Yildiz Holding has 29,500 employees and is the parent company of 69 production and marketing companies in the areas of food and non-alcoholic beverages, packaging, and information technologies.
Business Situation
Yildiz Holding wanted to upgrade from the Windows XP operating system to a new operating system that would provide improvements in performance, security, system management, and ease of use.
Solution
The company decided to upgrade its systems to the Windows 7 operating system and to upgrade its servers to the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system.
Benefits
· High performance
· Scalability and reliability
· Ease of deployment and use / “The main theme of our project was ‘performance,’ and Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 have met our performance expectations and given us a cost-effective way to upgrade our systems.”
Yasin Colakoglu, System Specialist, Yildiz Holding
Yildiz Holding, based in Turkey, has grown from a regional company into a global corporation. The company began using the Windows XP operating system in 2004. In 2009, it decided to upgrade to a newer operating system that would offer the latest technologies without adversely affecting system performance. Ideally, the new operating system would run on existing hardware to extend computer life cycles. Yildiz Holding began testing beta versions of the Windows 7 operating system and found that it met or exceeded the company’s expectations for performance, security, system management, and ease of deployment. Working with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Bilge Adam, Yildiz Holding deployed Windows 7 Enterprise. In addition to Windows 7, the company chose to upgrade to the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system in order to take advantage of its interoperability with Windows 7.
Works the way you want
Situation
Yildiz Holding, based in Istanbul, Turkey, is the parent company of Ulker, one of the country’s major food manufacturers, and more than 60 affiliated companies. Yildiz Holding focuses on the fields of food and non-alcoholic beverages, but it also has a presence in markets for financial and securities products, packaging, paper and hygienic products, logistics, and information technology. The company also owns seven biscuit, chocolate, and cake factories located in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Romania, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belgium, and the United States. The company has nearly 29,500 employees and achieved sales of U.S.$10.9 billion in 2008.
Since its founding, Yildiz Holding has aimed to grow quickly and move from being a regional company to having a global presence through efficient and cost-effective business processes. The company’s IT department follows the same principles. “In accordance with our company’s business objectives, we try to maximize the business value of our desktop and laptop computers so that they can meet our needs for as long as possible,” says Tanju Cataltepe, General Manager of IT at Yildiz Holding.
In 2004, Yildiz Holding upgraded all its computer systems to a standard hardware configuration and the Windows XP operating system. At the beginning of 2009, the company used Windows XP Service Pack 3, and was mostly happy with the operating system. The company did not want to upgrade just for the sake of upgrading. “Our employees run a variety of business applications, and the most important thing is how well those applications perform,” says Catltepe. “When Windows Vista came out, we didn’t upgrade immediately, because we were concerned that there might be compatibility issues with our existing hardware, and we weren’t ready to upgrade all of our hardware.”
With support for Windows XP nearing its end, Yildiz Holding began to think about migrating to a newer version of Windows. The company hoped that the upgrade to a newer operating system would provide them with performance benefits and system management advantages, and because Yildiz Holding has a number of branch offices, it was important that the operating system be easy to deploy.
Solution
In June 2009, the IT team at Yildiz Holding began testing beta versions of the Windows 7 operating system, and early results were good. When the Windows 7 Release Candidate became available, the IT department started using it more extensively. “The low resource utilization of Windows 7 on our systems left a very positive impression on us during our tests,” says Cataltepe. “We also felt that we would greatly benefit from the new security features, and that they would give us more granular control over user management. Our tests also confirmed the performance claims that Microsoft had made in Windows 7 press releases and, in many cases, it ran better than Windows XP.”
Yildiz Holding had security measures in place, but they were based on a one-size-fits-all approach that did not work perfectly for every user. For example, the IT department needed to grant greater access rights to developers than to standard office workers, without compromising basic security policies. Yildiz Holding found that Windows 7 offered ways to make this easier. “In Windows 7, we saw a security structure that enables customizations and fine granular definition of user profiles,” says Cataltepe. “In this respect, the new features of Windows 7 are a perfect fit for our business objectives.”
The company also saw benefit in the AppLocker security feature of Windows 7. Previously, IT staff had restricted standard users’ access to the Local Administrator account. Although some users needed administrator rights for business reasons, it opened up the possibility of installing and running unauthorized software that might contain viruses. “AppLocker addresses this issue for us,” says Cataltepe. “We can now enable a user to run certain applications with higher-level rights, while still restricting that user’s access to the Local Administrator account.”
Because more and more of the company’s employees need to work remotely, it is important to keep data secure on those computers. Yildiz Holding found a solution in Windows 7 to this problem as well. “Companies today need to employ methods to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive company information in the case of lost or stolen laptops,” says Cataltepe. “With BitLocker drive encryption in Windows 7, it is very easy for us to do that.”
In September 2009, after ten weeks of testing Windows 7, the IT department felt ready to migrate all computers to Windows 7 Enterprise. In consultation with Microsoft, the company planned an enterprisewide deployment scenario that would also include the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system and Active Directory Domain Services, in order to make better use of Windows 7 management features. “Because our department centrally supports a large, distributed user group with a small IT team, the Windows 7 central management features for Active Directory are important to us,” notes Cataltepe.
Yildiz Holding had previously worked with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Bilge Adam on a Microsoft System Center Operations Manager project. The success of that project gave Yildiz Holding confidence in the project approach and expertise of the Bilge Adam staff, so Yildiz Holding chose to bring it in to assist with the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 deployment.
Bilge Adam also had experience helping companies with early deployments of Windows 7. “As part of the early deployment program, we deployed Windows 7 before its official launch date in many enterprise-class companies, including Yildiz Holding,” explains Korhan Ergonul, Sales Group Manager at Bilge Adam. “Because it is an early deployment, we provide support for in-house IT teams who are already overloaded with their own ongoing projects. This ensures a smooth and seamless transition to their new operating system. Windows 7 is an excellent product—far beyond previous operating systems—and we are happy to be able to bring it to our customers.”
“Windows 7 includes drivers for most hardware components,” says Yasin Colakoglu, System Specialist at Yildiz Holding. “Except for a few components, such as Web-camera and wireless adapter, we didn’t even need to open installation CD envelopes for the systems.”
The IT team used Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager to deploy Windows 7. “Thanks to the Zero Touch Deployment feature in System Center Configuration Manager, it takes only a single mouse click to deploy the operating system,” says Colakoglu. “We use it not only for operating system deployments and updates, but also for hardware and software inventory management.”
The team also found that System Center Configuration Manager simplified deployment to its many branch offices. It was difficult to dispatch technical personnel to each site for software updates. “We have large offices in nearly 20 locations and many other small offices,” says Cataltepe. “These offices used to pack up their systems and send them to the head office through a courier service when they needed upgrades. Now, with System Center Configuration Manager, we can create Windows 7 images and send them to these locations on DVDs. Employees insert these DVDs into their computers, and installation begins automatically when they boot up the system. Depending on the configuration and amount of data, installation takes about 2 hours. We even maintain the employee’s customized desktop shortcuts.”
In October 2009, Yildiz Holding migrated to Active Directory Domain Services in Windows Server 2008 R2 in all its locations, and established Windows Server 2008 R2 64-Bit as its enterprisewide standard server operating system. The company finished migrating all its computers to Windows 7 by the end of 2009.
Benefits
With its migration to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, Yildiz Holding gave its employees a robust, reliable, and high-performing operating system. IT staff benefit from simplified deployment features in addition to enhanced security and streamlined system management.
High Performance
Yildiz Holding found that Windows 7 performs very well. “Our tests showed that Windows 7 is performing far better than Windows Vista, even faster than Windows XP in some processes,” says Colakoglu. “The main theme of our project was ‘performance,’ and Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 have met our performance expectations and given us a cost-effective way to upgrade our systems.”
The company also had a good experience with the performance of Windows Server 2008 R2. “Besides the user management advantages of the new Active Directory, Windows Server 2008 R2 offers significant performance advantages in terms of CPU, RAM, and input/output device utilization. This performance improvement is making a significant difference, particularly in virtualized environments,” says Colakoglu.
Security and Reliability
The IT team at Yildiz Holding can now establish more granular and customizable security management protocols for the employees at its many offices and partner companies. The team can now also better secure data on mobile computers using the BitLocker feature in Windows 7, and can control software installation with AppLocker.
“With Local Administrator rights, some employees were trying to install unauthorized—and even unlicensed—software into their systems,” says Colakoglu. “It is possible to track down such violations on System Center Configuration Manager inventory reports, but the reports are only produced at certain intervals, which means that any response is delayed. With AppLocker, on the other hand, an employee can install only the applications we have approved. In addition, when employees make an application request to the IT department, we can run an approval process to check the licensing situation with that application and which business need it will meet.”
Ease of Deployment and Use
Yildiz Holding finds that Windows 7 offers deployment advantages when compared to Windows XP, particularly because the company has added many different hardware configurations to its inventory since the move to Windows XP in 2004. “If we were to deploy Windows XP today, we would need to create a separate image for each computer configuration and manage them separately,” explains Colakoglu. “With the Windows 7 deployment model, we need only create two images, one for 32-bit and one for 64-bit. During deployment, we select the appropriate image for each system, and installation proceeds automatically, including the installation of hardware drivers and user applications. This significantly simplifies and shortens deployment.”
The company also noted that both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 include many user interface improvements that contribute to ease of use. “The graphical user interfaces of both operating systems are very similar, easy to use, and easy to get accustomed to,” says Colakoglu. “When I have to go back to use previous operating systems, I miss the new features!”
Windows 7
Works 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
Works the way you want