Analyst and IT Experts around the world are advising IT departments that the time to move to Windows 7 is now.

Why this urgency? The reasons are varied:

• Microsoft is going to end XP support therefore necessitating a migration.
• Downgrade rights from Windows 7 to XP won't last forever, so buying XP for new PCs could eventually get expensive.
• Aplications developed for XP won't be around forever. Eventually, Windows 7 will become the new default Microsoft operating system.

No wonder large and small businesses alike are already in the midst of taking decisions about their Windows desktop road map. The result—enterprise optimism on Windows 7 is very high.

However, when it comes to implementation, there are lots of factors to keep in mind while migrating from Windows XP or Vista to Windows 7: a typical organization requires 12 to 18 months waiting, testing, and planning before it can start deploying a new client OS. Despite the above, deployment is a complicated task that involves the migration of a huge number of standard and customized business-critical applications, defining imaging strategies with advantages of new toolset, addition of Application Packaging guidelines and optimizing deployment strategies.

Here are some enterprise challenges when it comes to migrating to Windows 7:

• Application compatibility and migration complexity
• High onsite requirement of resources
• Business downtime caused during the deployment process
• Loss of data during migrations
• Rate of failure
• Low visibility into the process