News
IT Analysis: Camwood Technology Puts Tube Lines On Track For Early Vista Migration
30/11/2007
London Underground maintenance and upgrade company aims for "business-as-usual" upgrade to latest Microsoft operating system
LONDON, November 28, 2007 - Tube Lines announced it is using technology from application compatibility specialist Camwood to prepare for the move next year of its 2,500 users to the Windows Vista operating system. Camwood's appTitude™ application compatibility testing solution is helping the London Underground maintenance and upgrade company carry out its planning for a "business-as-usual" migration to be completed by the third quarter of 2008.
"Tube Lines is an innovative and forward-thinking company. Having the latest technology fits in with what we are trying to achieve as a business," said Adrian Davey, head of IT at Tube Lines, adding: "We wanted to move to Vista before it became imperative, so we would always feel comfortable about the transition."
Having taken the decision to migrate 12 months ago, Tube Lines has already done much of the planning, but Davey insists this would not have been possible without Camwood. "We had a list of things that had to be in place before we would do the refresh and one of them was an absolute understanding of our application estate, of how our 211 applications would work with different operating systems. The solution from Camwood has given us the assurance that we are on the right path."
Tube Lines is using Camwood's appTitude to determine quickly and accurately which applications will work with Vista and which will need remediation effort. It is planning to deploy Microsoft's virtualisation platform, SoftGrid, for applications which will not make the transition.
Tube Lines is looking forward to the collaboration benefits Vista can bring. "If an engineer is trying to fix a train in a depot, traditionally they would physically have to go and find the paperwork and look up the wiring diagrams. Whereas, in today's world of collaboration, with Vista, Sharepoint and Office 2007, they can use Windows Mobile to see how to fix it there and then. It's all about doing things quicker and ensuring the reliability of the assets we maintain," commented Davey.
The organisation also believes it is well equipped for the future, having gained control of its application estate using Camwood's appTitude. "This is not a one-off exercise," says Davey. "It's more about ongoing business as usual as it enables our service desk analysts to support the end users more effectively through greater knowledge of our application estate."
appTitude is a client-server software solution that automates the application testing requirement for companies migrating to Microsoft Vista. appTitude draws from Camwood's experience working with applications migration data from consulting projects with over 100 large corporations, supporting some 50,000 applications. Automated testing algorithms ensure that an entire organisation's software can be tested in days vs months, and the customer receives a visual display of the compatibility issues they face - a green, amber or red light indicates whether an application will migrate without problems, whether it will have some problems, or whether it will not migrate effectively. A detailed report is then prepared to enable the IT team to address the problem areas, with detailed technical information highlighting the necessary ‘fixes' they need to implement to ensure an application installs and runs correctly under Vista.
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