The End of Windows 7

I haven’t migrated to Win 10 yet, what should I do?

Don’t panic, you’re not alone. However, large-scale migrations can take 12 to 18 months, so it is time to get started.

The first step is an inventory of existing devices, to understand usage patterns, upgrade potential, and replacement requirements. The next step is an application audit. While most applications will transfer from Windows 7 to Windows 10 without requiring reinstallation, this is an opportunity to rationalize your applications, retire those that are rarely used, and address shadow IT cases. Then monitor performance details to determine license requirements, assess the benefits of the migration, and identify potential issues before they impact the business. Detailed breakdowns of performance health by user role, device type, department, and location help schedule the roll-out and manage strategic differences.

Consider deploying end user experience monitoring tools to give you detailed before, during, and after migration metrics. With these tools you can establish performance baselines, track productivity impacts, and have real-time views of application and device health for every user and device, whether mobile, virtual, or physical.

How do you validate whether the Win 10 migration was successful?

The most important gauge of a successful migration is the experience of your end users. Experience monitoring tools enable you to capture and compare application response time details before and after the migration to quantify the impact of the migration. Summary graphs display differences by application, quickly and visually verifying that the performance of most applications is as good or better than on Windows 7. However, there are always exceptions, and with these tools you can dive deeper into the data to find and address the outliers.

Application performance is affected by a variety of issues. With end user experience tools, you can rapidly isolate the under-performing application and determine if the slow-down is associated with a specific server, network link, location, or device type, or is part of a broader problem. In many cases you can zero in on the affected areas and remedy the problem before users notice and complain. Performance analysis should become a regular part of IT operations to watch for changes that are impacting application performance and user experience and address them before they affect the business.

What are the key metrics to monitor?

User experience is best evaluated by measuring render time for business activities, not general statistics about server or network performance. Users care about how long they have to wait to login, load applications, and execute specific processes to do their jobs.

Below are some of the key metrics to validate performance after your migration.

1. Performance before/after change: Measure app performance of Win 10 vs Win 7 users to identify issues and validate the impact of the change
2. Response time: Measure response time from the user’s device to the network and backend.
3. Delay breakdown: Troubleshoot application problems quickly by measuring response time and breaking delay down into client, network, and backend.
4. SLA performance: Monitor performance of business activities as experienced by your users and compare to established service levels.
5. Performance by geography, OS, and device type: Identify slowdowns in a specific geo, OS, device type to better diagnose and remediate issues quickly.

Compare the performance of critical applications before and after the migration to Win 10.