Introducing Windows 2000 Deployment Planning

Case Study 3: Multinational Financial Services Corporation

A multinational financial services organization comprised of seven separate operating companies has primary headquarters located in North America, Europe, Asia Minor, and Southeast Asia. Over 50 major regional offices provide a complete range of financial services (investment and personal banking, asset management and insurance). Each operating company is an autonomous business unit; however, at the local level, each company might share offices with one or more operating companies.

This company operates under the strict regulatory scrutiny of many countries and regions and under their respective statutes regarding financial privacy, trading, and IT functionality and security. As a result, maintaining secure and stable systems at both the network operating system level and the desktop operating system level is required.

Existing IT Environment

There is no central IT group for all operating companies, so there are no comprehensive IT standards for the entire organization. Each operating company has created its own standards; therefore, each company has its own IT infrastructure. In some locations, operating companies share one common network. In other locations, the number of networks matches the number of operating companies sharing that office location. Local offices, especially the consumer and retail locations, maintain their own file and print servers, although regional offices usually have domain controllers. Regional offices are otherwise limited in their IT functions.

Some financial services applications require the UNIX operating system. Currently, all infrastructure services such as Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) and DNS are managed in a UNIX environment. Windows 2000 DNS dynamic update protocol will be used while the company researches the possibility of migrating the custom applications running on UNIX servers to Windows 2000.

Their current network operating system environment runs 95 percent on Windows NT Server 4.0 and five percent on Novell NetWare Bindery. The current client operating systems in use at each operating company include 80 percent Windows NT Workstation 4.0, approximately 15 percent Windows NT Workstation 3.51, and about 5 percent Windows 95. Some financial services professionals use both UNIX and Windows NT 4.0 clients.

Goals for Deploying Windows 2000

One of the operating companies is developing its own Active Directory structure with the goal of creating a common global directory design for the entire organization. A parent company IT initiative driven by a group of IT professionals that represent each of the operating companies is also working to develop a company-wide Active Directory structure.

The organization plans to retire NetWare Bindery when they install Windows 2000. The network will use both Windows 2000 and UNIX for the foreseeable future.

Table 1.4 summarizes the IT goals of this organization and includes the reasons why this organization chose Windows 2000 to meet their goals.

Table 1.4 IT Goals for a Multinational Financial Services Corporation

Goals	What Windows 2000 Offers
Common client operating system across the entire environment to enable standardization, improve manageability and administrative capability, and reduce TCO.	Increased hardware support allows for a wider selection of company-standard computers (desktop and portable). Improved power management enables network information to be as accessible on portable computers as it is on desktop computers. Group Policy and other management tools can be enabled across the entire IT environment.
Common network operating systems that offer scalability and availability for IT environments with different needs throughout all operating companies.	Offers clustering, load balancing, and the ability to handle large data stores and complex objects. Single point of administration requires only one set of administrators. Group Policy enables refined management for all clients.
Client security on all desktops and portable computers.	Can secure a portable computer as you can a desktop.
Need for multiple monitors at each desktop to simultaneously track trading and access customer information.	Allows one CPU to support more than one monitor.
Reduce TCO through reduced client management while increasing the level of service.	Improved Group Policy and integration with Systems Management Server.
Reduce in-house software development and associated costs.	Component Services and other tools, such as Windows Installer, that are included with Windows 2000 Server enable easier tool building and reduce the time invested in developing custom applications.
Common directory for all operating companies.	Active Directory has sufficient flexibility to accommodate all operating companies.
Allow each separate company to have its own child domain or domains.	Active Directory design uses a top-level domain name as a placeholder domain, thereby allowing each separate company to have its own child domain or domains.
Share a common directory between Exchange Server and Windows 2000 Server.	Synchronize Microsoft® Exchange Server version 5.5 directory with Active Directory by using Active Directory Connector.
Remote administration of services.	Terminal Services is configured in the lightweight Administrative mode rather than Application Server mode. This gives administrators another option for remote administration without negatively impacting server performance.