Operating Systems and Standard Operating Environment

Introduction

When desktop computers and Local Area Networks (LAN) appeared in the 1980’s, they were small scale and being somewhat complex they required hands on technical skills, so were acquired in limited quantities. The low cash costs also meant they were often purchased without the approval of senior management.

The popularity of computers and LANs grew to the point that some organisations recognised the need to account for the cost of assets and time spent on support. Industry analysts, using Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) techniques, have studied the real costs and found that they are around 6-7 times the initial purchase price over the lifetime of the technology.

With an uncontrolled purchasing, companies find that the hardware estate is made up of a wide range of devices from different manufacturers. Little knowledge of how old the equipment is and the existence of support agreements are also commonplace.

Operating Systems (OS) have been produced in abundance by software vendors for many years. These platforms are generally installed by the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM), i.e. pre-installed at the time of purchase, or by a technically competent individual within the organisation.

From the wide choice of platforms available, businesses find that there is more than one OS platform installed across the enterprise. Even if only one OS is available, it is extremely unlikely that there is a consistent installation baseline, due to changing business requirements, the release of service packs, hot fixes and the multitude of sub-components available.

At a time when organisations have become reliant on the technology it leads to a serious IT Service challenge, since consistent end-to-end services can rare...

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...ler to introduce or change a service provider

Disadvantages

The main disadvantage of creating an initial SOE, that adds benefit to a business, is the amount of time and effort it takes to produce. With the resources involved in the design and testing stages and the amount of work required to produce a finalised image and the delivery infrastructure, costs can soon mount up and can become increasingly difficult to justify. There are several other issues relating to the introduction of an image;

• If the hardware estate is not sufficient then the creation of an automated SOE installation will not achieve a return on investment (ROI) within an acceptable timeframe

• The majority of image changes are caused by driver updates a hardware purchase policy should be introduced, or the effort associated with constantly changing the image will impact on the cost saving