• Nearly 90% of 45,000 desktops made the upgrade to Windows 11.
• 24% of running applications not Windows 11-compatible.
• Third-party ManagementStudio helped smooth the transition.

Hitachi Energy has completed a migration to Windows 11 on more than 40,000 desktops in 12 countries. The company used ManagementStudio to help it complete the task, which it began in November 2023 starting with a 500-device pilot. The full migration process began in March 2024, and was scheduled to end in October 2024.

ManagementStudio assessed the company’s assets to be 45,335 devices, with 43,568 devices determined as suitable for upgrade. Out of the 3,034 applications in use, 2,330 were deemed to be compatible with Windows 11 (76%).

Eventually, around 40,600 devices made the upgrade to Windows 11 (89%), and the remaining ineligible devices had to settle for an upgrade to the latest version of Windows 10.

ManagementStudio was also used by Hitachi Energy to support the company’s divestment from ABB in June 2020. The platform helped IT staff manage the exit from the Transition Service Agreements (TSA) with ABB inside three years, ending June 2023. The early exit helped the company avoid additional costs that would have been incurred had the transition been delayed.

Marco Rena, Global Head of End User Computing at Hitachi Energy, said the goal of Windows 11 migration was to “upgrade [Hitachi Energy’s] estate with minimal manual intervention and [avoid] the need to individually test every application. The scope was to undergo a readiness migration to verify application and hardware compatibility. This was achieved using ManagementStudio and integrating it with Intune, Active Directory, Flexera Service and ServiceNow. And, we also integrated ManagementStudio with PowerBI to generate […] reports.”

The timescale of the migration was reportedly faster than average. Hitachi Energy managed to upgrade nearly 10,000 devices in May 2024 alone, using the ManagementStudio platform to automate the migration process, following predefined criteria.

Reasons to and method of upgrade to Windows 11

Rena explained how Hitachi Energy implemented its Windows 11 upgrade using a ‘by exception’ approach. “By requesting pilot users from all areas of the business, Hitachi Energy was able to run the new operating system for a few weeks and catch any application issues that occurred. Once the pilot device was approved, its application portfolio could be considered compatible and used as the basis for confidently selecting more desktops throughout the business.”

The pilot helped ensure a reliable, smooth migration by resolving any issues early on, before the upgrade was rolled out on a larger scale.

As Windows 10 approaches its end-of-support in the Autumn this year, moving PC fleets to supported and secure operating systems will help lower the instances of cybersecurity issues. The March ‘Patch Tuesday’ update from Microsoft contained security updates to address 57 known flaws, including six actively-exploited zero-day vulnerabilities, and six vulnerabilities that were marked as ‘Critical’, each of which was a remote code execution vulnerability.

Given the ubiquity of Microsoft operating systems on enterprise desktops, organisations should be considering their options ahead of the cut-off in a few months. If more time is required for the upgrade to Windows 11, users can pay on a per-seat basis for a further 12 months support from Microsoft.

(Image source: “Old banger” by 70023venus2009 is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.)