- Welcome to Desktop Deployment Essentials.
Our brand-new 10-part series
designed to help you plan and make the shift
to the modern desktop.
The modern desktop delivers an empowering
and secure workspace
powered by the latest productivity, teamwork
and collaboration experiences from the Microsoft Cloud.
I know in the many years I've worked with IT professionals
around the world that there's always anxiety
that comes with any change.
And the changes IT professionals have to deal with today
have moved from huge wage of changes
that came every three or four years
to continuous ripples of change.
Now the role of an IT professional
is more challenging than ever and at the same time,
the impact on the business has never been greater.
One of the most significant changes IT
is responsible for today is the move to Windows 10
and the move to using more cloud services
such as Office 365.
The good news is that if you haven't deployed
a new desktop environment for a while,
many things about the deployment process
have been improved.
Challenges of the past such as application compatibility
are much less of an issue today.
With new tools and insights delivered from the cloud,
you can move forward with confidence
faster than ever before to embrace these changes
and empower your organization.
And as you adapt to these modern approaches
where the Microsoft intelligent cloud
is enhancing your capabilities,
I promise you that you'll be rewarded
and be able to deliver the most empowering,
rich and secure workspace for your users.
One of the key things I see organizations focus on
is simplifying their infrastructure.
A simplified infrastructure delivers a simpler experience
for your users that is also more secure.
A simplified infrastructure enables you to move faster
because you worry less about things breaking.
A great example is Windows 10 comes
with built in industry-leading endpoint protections,
easier access to the latest security updates,
improved information protection
and integrated Identity and Access Management.
One of the key tenets of modern management practices
is devices are always up-to-date
and through this series,
you're gonna see new capabilities that are being delivered
to help you move to Windows 10 and Office ProPlus
and stay current with the semi-annual releases of both.
So let me break things down for you.
I'll start with what's changed and improved
into your last desktop deployment.
Then I'll introduce you
to our modern desktop deployment wheel
with recommended steps, tools and guidance
for your shift in Windows 10 and Office ProPlus.
Now note, you're gonna see deep dives
across each step on the wheel
as you go further into the series.
And I'll point out how you can leverage
your existing tools and processes
while adopting modern management technology
and approaches along the way.
If you haven't shifted your desktop deployment in a while,
you're likely using Windows 7
and either Office 2010 or 2013.
Now you'll notice that a few things have evolved
since your last major upgrade.
At the core of the modern desktop
is this connectivity to the cloud.
The cloud powers productivity, security and management
with modern identity and Access Management
delivered by a Azure Active Directory at the core.
This enables single sign-on and secure connectivity
across all of your cloud services.
You'll need Azure Active Directory in place
for Office 365 ProPlus and as you start to take advantage
of Microsoft 365 services such as Office 365,
Intune or Windows Autopilot.
And something unique to Intune
is the ability to co-manage your Windows 10 devices
with System Center Configuration Manager,
together with Microsoft Intune.
ConfigMgr is the tool most organizations
will use as a shift to Windows 10
and when you add Intune to ConfigMgr,
ConfigMgr becomes part of the intelligent edge
connected to the Microsoft intelligent cloud.
Next if you have not switched from BIOS to UEFI
and 64-bit, now's the time.
Not only will this speed up your boot times
but it's required to enable many
of the modern security capabilities in Windows 10.
There are tools available to make this switch either after
or during your upgrade to Windows 10.
And as you acquire new PCs,
we've introduced a new cloud service
to quickly deploy Microsoft 365 devices
called Windows Autopilot.
Autopilot is integrated with many of our hardware providers
so that new PCs are automatically registered in autopilot
enabling them to be shipped directly to the end user.
When the PC is powered on that first time,
it's quickly configured to the desired configuration
of your organization and then customized
to the unique needs of that user.
And as you look to Office 365 apps,
our strong recommendation is to deploy Office 365 ProPlus.
This gives you access to the newest innovations
in Office as they're developed
and not wait years before giving your users
those new capabilities that they're gonna want.
Office 365 ProPlus uses click-to-run
and don't worry, it's still a local copy of Office
and you can continue to use your existing deployment tools
like ConfigMgr to provision and configure the apps.
Once you've moved to Windows 10 in Office 365 ProPlus
updates are delivered semi-annually with new features.
We're delivering insights from the cloud
to help you quickly and confidently roll out these updates
to hundreds or thousands of devices.
Like an in-place upgrade, the feature update preserves apps,
data and configurations from the previous installation.
So these are some of the core changes
but where do you start?
Before we roll up our sleeves,
you'll want to create a high-level plan
and get the necessary sponsors on board.
Our modern deployment process wheel outlines critical steps
to help you identify core team members and resources
in the following deployment areas.
First on the wheel is device and app readiness.
This first step relates to taking inventory
of your devices and apps and verifying compatibility.
For that, we've built new tools with Desktop Analytics
that are available now
and we're working on a broader set of capabilities and tools
spanning all of Microsoft 365 to inventory,
analyze your apps devices and Office plugins,
so that you can build confidence to move forward.
We're also working on additional options
to help understand compatibility and readiness
of your custom line of business applications.
These work by tapping into the compatibility intelligence
and telemetry from hundreds of millions of PCs
to both understand app and driver availability
from Microsoft to assess readiness
for your desktop estate.
You can also export a list of PCs rated for deployment
from these tools to System Center Configuration Manager
so that you can build data-driven collections
of targeted PCs as they become ready to upgrade.
Next on the wheel is Directory & Network Readiness.
If you haven't already, you'll want to implement
Azure Active Directory for Identity and Access Management.
You'll also want to get your network ready
for moving system images, application packages
and user files across your network
to support later deployment on migration activities.
We've done a lot of work building network optimizations
that span peer to peer,
throttling and differential updating
and you'll learn more about that on episode two
of our series Desktop Deployment Essentials.
The third step is Office
& LOB (Line Of Business) application delivery.
This ensures your apps
are ready for automated deployment
and you'll need to be familiar
with the click-to-run Office deployment
and your configuration options.
Next on the wheel, User Files & Settings migration.
You can use the user state migration tool
as a part of your deployment plans
in ConfigMgr or MDT.
This step is often a timing bottleneck
for PC replacement do the physics
that are involved in transferring sometimes
hundreds of gigabytes per PC in each direction.
OneDrive Known Folder move is a new option
to synchronize your user documents,
pictures and desktop files into the cloud at scale
ahead of your deployment.
Having all your files in OneDrive
protects all your files
and it simplifies future upgrades
and PC replacement scenarios.
Now let's move on and Security & Compliance,
the next step on our wheel.
This is an area that lot of upside
when moving to Windows 10 and Office 365 ProPlus.
New capabilities in Windows 10
using virtualization based security
can prevent credential theft,
protect against browser based exploits
and malicious code execution
by isolating core processes and secrets
from the operating system.
And cloud services like Advanced Threat Protection
give you a unified platform for security hardening,
post breach detection, investigation and response.
ATP can also safeguard you
against malicious email attachments,
unsafe hyperlinks and more.
And this brings us to OS Deployment & Feature updates.
This is really about getting OS images deployed.
A lot of the heavy lifting will be done
using configuration manager task,
sequences and infrastructure.
We recommend deploying in phases
where a representative set of hardware and apps
are targeted to early adopters.
You'll then use the data from those devices and users
to gradually target more and more PCs.
Now a new part of modern desktop management
is Windows & Office as a Service.
This helps you continually bring new capabilities,
experiences and protections to your users.
There are a couple of concepts that are core
to Windows and Office as a Service.
The first is a semi-annual feature update
which delivers new capabilities in the fall
and spring of each year.
And second our monthly cumulative quality updates
which contains security, reliability and bug fixes.
Again, our strong recommendation
is to move to Office 365 ProPlus,
so your users get updates to the Office apps
on a regular basis.
Finally, user Communications & Training
is critical to driving usage of new capabilities
that enhance teamwork, communications, security and more.
Before broad deployment is targeted to users
outside of the early adopter rings,
user communication and training
should be planned to drive desired changes
in how people use the new capabilities of Office, Windows
or other line of business applications and services.
Here we also have free online training
via Microsoft fast-track
and you may be eligible for direct support
as a Microsoft 365 or Office 365 organization.
Plus, we've published free sample communication plans
and timelines, together with email,
social and intranet templates
to help you with your rollout of Windows 10
and Office 365 ProPlus.
Okay, so now you know it's new and different
and I've walked you through
our recommended deployment process wheel,
to give you a taste of the end and guidance
and tools we've built to get you to a modern desktop.
The cloud is changing how management
and security of PCs is done.
The Microsoft Intelligent Cloud
delivering actionable insights is core
to help you shift to a modern desktop.
To learn more keep, watching as you go deeper
on each step of the deployment wheel
on Desktop Deployment Essentials
here on Microsoft Mechanics.
In fact, next up is device and app readiness.
Thanks for watching.