Moving to Office 2007? Let iPass Handle the Heavy Lifting

Moving offices can be a disruptive, time-consuming process if not done right. For example, you could rent a truck, buy some pizza and beer, and find some hungry college students. But you would have to consider the breakage and downtime. Or, you could hire a professional mover who does this every day—and rest a little easier.

With nearly 4 million downloads of Microsoft Office 2007 Beta 2, it appears that many companies are getting ready to make this move. So how do you upgrade the world's leading desktop productivity suite without shutting down user productivity in the process?

A growing number of companies are choosing the professional approach: Endpoint Policy Management from iPass. This mobile management solution automates system inventory and software distribution across local and remote devices.

Moving Forward with Endpoint Policy Management
According to the old adage, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. That's why industry analysts are urging IT managers to plan their Office 2007 migrations now—even if they don't intend to immediately deploy the new desktop productivity suite. These same analysts point to change management as a determining factor between a successful and a problematic application deployment.

Given the business-critical nature of Microsoft Office, which includes calendaring, e-mail and an increasing number of back-office hooks, it's important to have a detailed understanding of what applications reside on each device and thoroughly test packages prior to deployment. Without the right tools, gaining insights into mobile devices can challenge even the most resourceful administrators. That's because in addition to corporate applications, users almost invariably install or update their own software.

"You need to start with an accurate inventory," insists Peg Kearney, help desk manager at Plantronics. Kearny uses Endpoint Policy Management to automatically inventory all hardware and software installed on more than 2,300 distributed endpoint devices, without any user intervention. "Before Endpoint Policy Management, it took me three weeks to gather inventory information from our various sites. Now it takes minutes."

An accurate software inventory can ensure that your company complies with licensing parameters, such as the Microsoft Enterprise Agreement. It also helps you identify users who may be purchasing standalone versions of software covered by these agreements.

Michael Voegtline, senior network specialist at accounting leader Wipfli, uses Endpoint Policy Management to distribute software to 1,000 distributed PCs and servers, including several mobile distributions that are several hundred megabytes in size. "We are planning an upgrade to Office 2007 and will likely use Endpoint Policy Management to complete this task," states Voegtline.

Flexible Hosting Option

IT administrators now have the option of choosing Endpoint Policy Management Online 4, a highly available service that's hosted by iPass in secure data centers.