Microsoft will no longer provide support for Windows 7 effective January 14, 2020. This means no technical support, no software updates, and no security fixes. Your computers could continue running on Windows 7 for years without support, but you will be at increased risk for viruses, malware, and vulnerability exploits, among other problems. It is time to migrate your remaining machines to Windows 10. However, applications developed on Windows 7 may perform differently on Win 10 and vice versa, so you will need to proceed with caution and monitor application performance to ensure your employees are not negatively impacted by the migration. You may also want to rewrite application code in some cases to take advantage of Win 10 capabilities and device upgrades to better support Win 10.
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.
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.
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.
Compare the performance of critical applications before and after the migration to Win 10.
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