[WinPartners] Preparing MIT for Microsoft's Windows Vista

[Jonathan McIndoe Hunt]

Good Morning,

In order to prepare the community for Microsoft's Windows Vista  
operating system at MIT, Information Service and Technology (IS&T)  
has worked with IT colleagues across campus and at other schools to  
outline a phased release process and support strategy. At this time,  
we strongly recommend that community members wait to upgrade to Vista  
until your Department, Lab or Center (DLC) is ready to make the  
transition and support you.  We anticipate most vendors will have  
Vista compatible versions of their software available by this summer,  
but some will lag with their support statement.

IS&T will make Vista media available as soon as possible to the DLC  
Software Liaisons.  Current estimate from Microsoft is that we could  
have media in hand by February.   We also plan to make a download  
option available around the same time.  To find out who your DLC's  
Software Liaison is, visit <http://web.mit.edu/ist/services/software/ 
msca.html>. In the meantime, we have reached out to DLC IT colleagues  
and will continue to work with them to evaluate Vista in their  
various computing environments at MIT.

Transitioning to Vista is complex - there are new hardware  
requirements, some critical software (e.g. TSM, FileMaker, SAPgui,  
etc.) still does not work with Vista, and Vista has a new user  
interface and many new features. Additional software is not yet  
supported for Vista by the software vendors.  We highly recommend  
that you work with your local IT staff to plan your transition and  
remember that they too need time to learn Vista in order to provide  
you robust support.

IS&T will share frequent updates on the Windows Vista release with  
the MIT community. For current information, including known issues  
and how to assist with testing, visit the Windows Vista Release  
Project Notebook at <http://web.mit.edu/swrt/releases/vista/>. If you  
have any questions or comments, please contact vista-release at mit.edu.

The remainder of this message provides more detailed information  
about the phases of the Windows Vista release process.

PHASED RELEASE PROCESS FOR WINDOWS VISTA

PHASE 1: April 2006 - November 2006

The Vista Release Team tested beta versions of the new operating  
system within the MIT environment and with different software. The  
team found that certain critical software did not work with the beta  
versions of Vista.



PHASE 2: November 2006 - January 2007

The Vista Release Team and community testers will retest the Released  
to Manufacturing (RTM) version of Vista and continue to report on  
issues and resolutions. Training will be offered to IT support  
providers throughout the community and the IS&T Computing Help Desk  
will prepare to provide basic support for Phase 3.  Until core safe  
computing components, such as Anti-Virus and Backup, are available  
IS&T recommends against running Vista in a production environment.



PHASE 3: February 2007 - June 2007 (or later)

New machines that run Windows Vista will start arriving on campus and  
Vista will be available via the Microsoft Campus Agreement (MSCA).  
The IS&T Computing Help Desk will provide support on configuring  
Vista for the MIT network, obtaining MIT personal certificates, and  
other basic functionality. Towards the end of this phase, IS&T will  
begin to offer training, such as Windows Vista Quick Starts, to  
community members. The Vista Release Team will continue to test new  
versions of software that are anticipated to work with Vista.  For  
example, the current version of MIT's licensed Anti-Virus package,  
VirusScan Enterprise 8.0i, does not work with Vista, but we  
anticipate that the next version, 8.5, will be compatible.



PHASE 4: Summer/Fall 2007 and onward

IS&T will fully support and recommend Vista once the core set of  
software, including anti-virus, backup, email, and web browsers, have  
been fully tested and work. Based on previous operating system  
releases, we anticipate that some other packages will continue to be  
incompatible with Vista for some time. We will continue to track  
these issues and recommend that customers who need such functions  
wait until the issues are resolved before moving to Vista. Once Vista  
has been established at MIT, we will work with the DLCs to determine  
when support for Windows XP should begin to decline.

Thanks,

Jon


___________________________________________________
Jonathan McIndoe Hunt     MIT EECS '97 617.253.0172
Manager Software Services
Client Support Services
Information Services & Technology, MIT
http://web.mit.edu/ist/topics/software/