METROPOLITAN STATE UNIVERSITY

Windows 7 Upgradeat the

University of St. Thomas

Gregory Lewis

3/29/2014

Summary

PC workstations at the University of St. Thomas (hereinafter referred to as “UST”), headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota, had been running under Microsoft Windows XP since 2003. The Vice-President of Technology and a Board of Project Managers oversaw the upgrade.

In 2010, Microsoft Corporation announced it was discontinuing support of its Windows XP OS software effective April 8, 2014. To maintain system security, XP users were required to switch to either Windows 7 or 8 OS. UST campus computers, through the LAN, stored large amounts of personal and financial information. Without manufacturer provided updates to the OS in use, this information became very vulnerable to malicious actions.

UST, being a privately funded institution required no shareholder approval for this endeavor. UST’s president and Board of Trustees were the primary responsible parties in implementing the upgrade. The upgrade scheduling was considered against the UST academic term schedule, specifically taking into account the Fall and Spring semesters during which the largest amount of students were in attendance.

Windows 7 was released in a two stage upgrade, planning and implementation. Campus PC workstation computers were acquired on three-year lease cycles. As the leases expired on 33% of computers annually, it was during that equipment switch-out/upgrade that the Windows 7 OS upgrade was implemented. Windows 7 was leased through an enterprise agreement with Microsoft in a package deal for all campus computers.

UST used two departments when upgrading campus technology: Information Technology, and Information Resource Technology. All UST campus PC workstations were successfully upgraded from Windows XP to Windows 7 over a three-year period from 2010 through 2013. UST Project Managers utilized “DEP store” to communicate and track progression and provide updates on the upgrade. Hands-on and online manufacturer training was completed for all IT personal, and passed on to UST staff.

The budget was established and the time frame accepted; however, there was little to no hands-on monitoring of workers time dedicated toward each task. Had project managers more closely monitored the upgrade, the university could have potentially saved money. If appropriate time had been taken within the departments for system testing, extra time and cost involved due to rolling back of system updates could have been avoided.

Windows 7 brought higher graphic resolution, faster processing, modern security features, and improved functionality including support of indexed searches across all campus PCs, to the university staff and students. Microsoft would continue to provide security patches to Windows 7 for the foreseeable future.

Windows 7 was successfully upgraded in the three year time period. The UST was able to stay within an annual $1,300,000 budget. Any issues that required attention were documented to be addressed at a later time. The University of St. Thomas ensured financial security through modern firewall features.

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UST Windows 7 Upgrade

The University of St. Thomas, a private not-for-profit Catholic university, headed by

University President Dr. Julie Sullivan and headquartered in St. Paul, MN, was founded in 1885

by the Archbishop John Ireland (Thomas). The university was ranked 112th in 2013 by U.S.

News and World Report as a top university in the United States. UST is governed by a forty-two

member Board of Trustees. The Board of Trustees interacts under the supervision of an elected

official, the Chairman of the Board. The elected chairman at the time of this upgrade was the

Reverend Harry Flynn, Archbishop Emeritus of St. Paul and Minneapolis (Thomas). For the first

time in UST’s history, a female president was chosen in 2013, Dr. Julie Sullivan. Dr. Sullivan

previously worked as the Executive Vice President and Provost of the University of San Diego

(Hennes). In fall of 2013, UST had an active enrollment of 10,400 students, with an average

annual per student tuition (excluding room and board) of $34,528. The university brought in over

$240,000,000 in revenue for the 2013 school year (UST).

As the operating system in use at UST (Windows XP) aged, the manufacturer of the OS,

Microsoft Corporation, ceased support of it. Once this program was deemed obsolete, the

manufacturer stopped producing updates. These updates would have improved not only

performance of systems, allowing for more efficient use of system resources, but also security.

As hackers exploited security loopholes in the OS, the manufacturer would patch the loopholes;

without these patches, hackers could have continued to exploit security inefficiencies.

The OS upgrade project at UST was a collaboration between the manufacturer,

Microsoft, and UST’s IT Department . Microsoft, a U.S. based computer manufacturer, was

founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1975 (Microsoft). Microsoft released programs to UST

through an enterprise agreement, which made them available for adaptation. In some instances

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UST altered and issued scripts as a way to conform a program to work for their specific needs

and requirements. In order to avoid performance and security issues, UST, starting in the Fall

Semester of 2010, upgraded PC workstation operating systems to Microsoft 2009 Windows 7,

64-bit. This upgrade replaced Microsoft’s 2001 operating system, Windows XP. The founding

reason for this upgrade resulted from the manufacturer ending support of Windows XP on April,

8, 2014 (Microsoft). Once support for the program was terminated by the manufacturer, there

would have no longer been patches made available for reoccurring issues within the program.

The decision to upgrade the OS used campus wide to Windows 7 was directly related to

the Microsoft’s discontinuation of the Windows XP program.

The system to be replaced, Microsoft Windows XP, was originally released on October

25, 2001 in both a 32 and 64-bit (Microsoft). After more than 12 years of continued service and

support, Windows XP was the longest running Windows operating system to date (Microsoft).

The system in use on UST campuses was the Windows XP 64-bit operating system. As the

workhorse on UST campuses, it controlled all operations within the computer network. The

campuses utilized numerous Dell and HP personal computer systems which ran a number of

typical Microsoft applications. The Windows XP system in use required a minimum 233 MHz

processor, 64 megabytes RAM, 1.5 GB hard disk and topped out screen resolution at 1280x1024

pixels (Microsoft).

The upgrade, Windows 7, also ran on a 64-bit operating system, but required a minimum

1 GHz processor, 2 GB RAM, 20 GB hard disk, a screen resolution of 1920x1080 pixels, and for

optimal resolution, Windows 7 needed a hardware system with a DirectX 9 graphics device with

WDDM 1.0 or higher driver (Microsoft).

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As UST hardware leases came to term, UST acquired personal computers capable of

running Windows 7. UST acquired their PC workstations on a three-year lease program; they

did not own them. When the third year of hardware arrived, the old PCs were replaced with the

Dell OptiPlex 790’s and HP Compaq 8300 Elites. The Board of Trustees looked substantially at

“soft-costs” when deciding to purchase or lease computer systems. The “soft-costs” were the

amount of time and money dedicated to repairing failing PC systems. After three years of use,

UST experienced a high rate of equipment failure. These failures resulted in technician,

replacement, and performance upgrade expenses. UST reviewed the cost-benefit analysis and

determined it would be negligent to purchase the PCs and the operating systems when leasing

allowed for a more effective replacement schedule that included warranty coverage.

Both the Dell OptiPlex and HP Compaq 8300 ran a 2nd generation i5 processor 2400/ 3.1

GHz quad-core processor. The Dell OptiPlex ran on a 1.5 TB hard drive, where the HP 8300

presented only a 1 TB hard drive. Both PCs had only 4 GB DDR3 SDRAM. Dell OptiPlex 790

offered Intel™ HD Graphics 2000 Dynamic Video Memory Technology 5.0 (Cnet). Both PCs

offered plenty of power and ability for future upgrades and system integration within UST.

When the Board of Directors and the President endorsed the campus upgrade to

Windows 7 OS, they communicated thoroughly with UST’s Vice-Presidents on how they

expected the task to get accomplished. The designated Board of Project Managers created a

realistic timeframe, and worked alongside the Department Directors to follow and monitor the

preset benchmarks.

UST’s Information Technology Department consisted of three divisions: the Server

Group, the IT Group, and the IRT Group. In 2013, these groups together were budgeted

$1,300,000 per fiscal year of UST’s overall budget (Ruth). With a project and budget of this

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scale, UST had to be able to provide major ongoing financing. The primary financial resources

were not generated by private party finances, but through undergraduate and graduate level

student’s tuition and ticket sales of various campus sports. The same people who financed this

upgrade were the main recipients of the benefits: the students. In addition, corporate fundraisers

were used to bring in funds through annual non-profit events, although very little of the

corporate sponsorships went toward the Information Technology budget (Eugene).

The budget proved to be properly forecasted as it was adhered to throughout the

implementation of the new operating system, with no department requesting additional funding

to compensate for oversights and overspending.

Interviews were completed with IT Project Manager Eugene, IRT Project Manager Ruth,

Department of Engineering Professor Dr. Greene, and end-user student Joe for their recaps and

viewpoints of the upgrade.

The IT Department was in charge of all upkeep and upgrades for equipment used by UST

students and staff. The Server Group handled all updates and maintenance on the main servers,

IRT handled all roll-outs of programs, computers, and customer interaction; and the IT Group

provided support for the two adjacent departments. UST engaged both the IT and IRT

Departments when upgrading campus technology.

The roll-out was completed as of Fall Semester 2013. The three-year time frame

corresponded to UST’s three-year rolling lease on their computer systems, the previous

Windows XP program operated within UST between 2003 and 2010 (Ruth). The Windows 7

program was sponsored and approved by the Board and President of the university; this

approval was passed onto the Vice-President who worked with the IT Department Director to

develop a formal project plan and implement the approved technology upgrade. The formal

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project plan for the upgrade was to be completed in two phases. The first phase was planning.

Planning was started in September 2009 and consisted of the IT and IRT Departments creating a

number of project plans along with a time frame to be reviewed by the Vice President before

proceeding with the upgrade. The planning phase also included small-scale system testing

between Windows 7 and campus hardware. The second phase was the implementation phase.

Implementation started in January 2010 and consisted of the rollout, mapping, and full-scale

testing of the campus network. The plan was approved by the Vice-President and IT Department

Director, and then turned over to the Board of Project Managers to start the upgrade process

(Ruth).

When UST rolled out its Windows 7 upgrade initiative, responsibility was placed upon a

variety of parties to oversee it to completion. The Board of Trustees, along with the UST

President, oversaw the Vice-Presidents, who in turn worked with the Board of Project

Managers and a variety of affected departments. The only interaction between the Board of

Project Managers and the individual departments, however, was through the Department

Director. Any communications between departments were discussed only during department

meetings. Communications within the varying affected areas were limited to e-mail (Greene).

The Project Managers set the time frames and also the benchmarks for when the departments

were to meet. Any scheduling or task management was each department’s responsibility to

ensure the project met its goals.

For the initial training of the IT Specialists, otherwise known as “Rapid Responders,”

Microsoft, HP, and Dell provided designated training for these individuals. The training

consisted of online courses, videos, and hands-on lessons with certified trainers (Ruth). With this

manufacturer training, UST was able to establish a skilled workforce for their help/support desk.

The IT Specialists were tasked with setting training dates for Techs and end users.

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The interaction between the educational departments and the IT departments was

mediated by a designated IT Specialist who communicated between their designated areas the

needs and issues that were experienced during the Windows 7 implementation.

Before implementation of the upgraded OS, testing was conducted under the supervision

of the IT Department Director. The Director, along with the department Project Manager created

a testing plan. An image of the network was created and applied to a small scale computer

network. The network was used to do small scale hands-on testing (Ruth). Within every

department an individual specialist and professor were designated to come in and use some of

the general programs to test their compatibility with the new OS. The individual specialist was

also referred to as a Department Tech or Local Tech. The Department Tech compiled a list of

department specific applications and was charged with testing hardware and software specific to

the department (Greene). Any issues that arose in preliminary testing were documented in DEP

Store, with an attention notice to the IT Department for required involvement.

Local Techs along with the IRT Department were tasked with upgrading the campus

systems. The hardware and software rollouts took place every summer between June and August

for three consecutive years. This timing was dictated by the academic term schedule that UST

followed. With lower enrollments during these months, the IT and IRT Departments were able to

slowly take down areas of the campus network to perform the updates. As the network was

upgraded, the IRT department took full image backups of the old and new system. This enabled

them to later go back and recover basic functionality if a specific PC did not interact well with

the new OS. After a system was initially backed up, it was programmed for either quarterly,

weekly, daily, or 4-hour back-ups based upon the needs of the specific area. In addition,

quarterly back-ups were conducted by IRT to ensure an up-to-date system map (Eugene).

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A weekly update during the second stage, the trial and implementation phase, of the

process was required to be posted to a dynamic shared resource called “DEP Store.” All

documentation related to the upgrade was stored within DEP Store. This gave all parties

involved in the upgrade access to up-to-date information and the ability to edit that information

according to the ever-evolving needs within the departments.

As part of regular system and network maintenance, most UST PC workstations were

programmed for auto-updating. If the program or hardware was unable to auto-update, they were

then manually updated each quarter by an IRT Specialist. Keeping the programs up-to-date

enabled the network to remain functioning at full capacity; if the program was unable to be

updated due to compatibility issues it would be backed-up to a previous point in order to

maintain functionality. If a system had to be backed-up to a point that was pre Windows 7, then

the computer, based on security risk, was isolated from the network until the IT Department

could come up with a solution that would enable it to be upgraded (Ruth). Workstations isolated

from the network were documented on DEP Store citing the reason for the removal.

Upgrading the OS on varying equipment within multiple and vastly differing departments

added a unique level of difficulty. Each department had a list of specific requirements that

needed to be met in order to maintain performance and optimization of resources throughout the

academic year. The utilization of DEP Store enabled live updates to the department specific

upgrade progression. The IT departments compiled weekly updates for the Board of Project

Managers. These updates were effective in ensuring that all information was up-to-date and any

issue that arose was dealt with in a timely manner.

The hands-on training provided by Microsoft, HP, and Dell was also effectively

implemented among the IT Specialists deemed “Rapid Responders.” The Rapid Responders

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hosted a number of training courses that gave UST staff and students the ability to learn about

the new operating system. Within the IRT Department, the Project Managers worked with the

Rapid Responders to provide training for the IRT staff. The IRT staff was the specialized IT

group who serviced the help desk, and provided much of the hands on support for the staff and

students on campus. Staff members were provided with booklets from Microsoft which

highlighted many of the features that they would be interacting with on a regular basis, as well as

contact information for staff members in the IRT Department for additional aid (Ruth).

Unfortunately, not all of the existing systems were able to interact with Windows 7.

Some equipment had replacements available; but many department utilities had no immediate

replacements available. An issue experienced by Professor Greene was the replacement of vital

computer programs and department science equipment. Some of the department’s science

devices had cost more than $10,000 for a single unit. The Windows 7 upgrade budget did not

include these types of unanticipated upgrades that were found to be necessary. In the Physics

Department, many workstations had to remain on the Windows XP OS. Because the input and

output utilized on the computers had to remain on Windows XP, for security reasons some

computers had to be removed from the campus network. These computers had to remain

detached from the rest of the campus system until funds could be made available to replace dated

systems or a work-around could be devised that did not affect system security.

Although the IT departments stayed within their $1,300,000 budget, there was little to no

monitoring of the hours being designated to any individuals. The department Project Managers

set the schedule within their area. According to Ruth, someone in IT or IRT would be designated

a task, and given a schedule to accomplish the required task. Scheduling information was relayed

to the Department Directors who followed up on the complete task. One shortcoming of the

Windows 7 upgrade project became apparent: there was no tracking or follow-up on any

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individual’s time spent on the project. It was not uncommon for someone to work beyond their

assigned task hours. This lack of monitoring could have promoted the abuse of hours, with no

accountability toward ensuring the hours were being tasked appropriately for what they were

given.

It’s easy to say UST excelled in the areas of training, support, and communication

structures that had come from years of hands-on experience. Unfortunately, issues arose that

could have been avoided with an increased interaction in the upgrading stages. Through a

number of interviews it became apparent that there was room for improvement, which started

with the interactions between varying departments. Although the Local Techs in the departments

requested information about programs and equipment, there was no requirement upon any

individual within the department to provide this information. The requests were placed, but many

departments gave the information in a time period that was convenient for them; sometimes

requiring the project to be back-tracked many days to compensate (Ruth). If UST directors had

played a more active role in requesting and requiring participation by university professors to do

their part in testing department-specific hardware and software for compatibility with the new

OS, as well as providing follow up with the IT Department , the project’s time frame could have

potentially been reduced.

Windows 7 allowed for easier integration with most modern hardware and software

systems. As UST moved toward the completion of the Windows 7 upgrade, security was no

longer a primary concern; all workstations running Windows 7 were able to remain on the

campus network. UST’s IT staff was no longer the primary provider of support for any computer

running Windows 7; with the new OS, Microsoft provided online support by automatically

providing updates and patches. However, not all of the university’s utility hardware and software

could be upgraded within the time frame of the roll-out; some required later upgrades.

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Although some end users, such as some UST professors, were initially dissatisfied with

the move away from the legacy system they were accustomed to; the staff members, with

training and support from IRT, successfully made the transition to the more modern operating

system.

In conclusion, although the project was a great success, there were areas that could have

been improved upon. The following are a few of the lessons learned during the project:

Inefficient scheduling and lack of tracking of I.T. support staff labor hours which potentially

permitted for an excessive use of hours spent on implementing the program; and, lack of

professor interaction earlier in the process allowed for substantial delays in the new program

being brought into the science departments. However, even if these areas had been executed

correctly they would have generated only a small margin of improvement when compared to the

overall scope and success of the entire hardware and Windows 7 up-grade.

UST, one of the top universities in the nation, successfully upgraded to one of the most

utilized modern operating systems in the world, and began using Windows 7 as additional tool to

help them remain on the leading edge of technology.

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Works CitedCnet. http://reviews.cnet.com/desktops/. January 2012. Web. 18 February 2014.

Eugene. Project Manager Greg Lewis. 12 February 2014. Print.

Greene, Dr. Professor Greg Lewis. 28 January 2014. Print.

Hennes, Doug. http://www.stthomas.edu/news/2013/02/14/president/. 14 February 2013. Web. 28 January 2014.

Microsoft. http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/inside_ms.aspx. 31 December 2013. Print. 28 January 2014.

Ruth. IRT Project Manager Gregory Lewis. 24 January 2014. Print.

Thomas, University of St. http://www.stthomas.edu/aboutust/history/. 2012. Print. 28 January 2014.

UST. http://www.stthomas.edu/aboutust/quickfacts/. January 2014. Web. 28 January 2014.

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