New Desktop Upgrade Push

The Business Desktop Deployment (BDD) Solution Accelerator, a set of tools and documentation for automating client software upgrades to the latest versions of Windows and Office, has been updated. The new accelerator brings together a set of offerings that Microsoft hopes will reduce the costs and risks associated with migrating large numbers of desktops and guide customers and service partners toward best practices for performing these migrations. However, the tools are complex and require a great deal of planning and testing, costs that must be allocated over a large number of standardized desktops before lower per-desktop deployment costs can be realized.

(The term desktop is used throughout this article and the BDD documents to refer to both desktop and portable PCs.)

Desktop Deployment a Key 2005 Initiative

One of Microsoft’s major “go-to-market” marketing campaigns for its 2005 fiscal year is to accelerate the rate at which customers upgrade their desktop and notebook systems to Windows XP and Office 2003. This is not simply a push for upgrade revenue; it is also designed to ensure that customers who have already paid for these products as part of Microsoft’s Enterprise Agreement (EA) and similar volume licensing programs actually deploy and get value out of the upgrade before their contracts come up for renewal.