Introducing Windows 2000 Deployment Planning

Case Study 2: Large Multinational Manufacturer

With headquarters in Europe, this multinational organization maintains offices in more than 190 countries. Growth takes place through expanded markets, increased product sales, and mergers and acquisitions. The company manufactures a wide range of products, including consumer and industrial electronics, computers, and instrumentation. Each separate manufacturing entity is run as an independent company under the umbrella of the parent corporation. There are over 130 separate operating companies, each with its own reporting structure and chief financial, information, and executive officers. This affects inter- and intra-organizational dynamics because each IT organization has different goals, budgets, objectives, and constraints. The parent company needs to provide support and guidelines for intercompany IT cooperation.

Existing IT Environment

There is no centralized IT operations group and few common IT standards across all operating companies, either for network or client operating systems, or for client productivity applications. The centralized IT office is responsible for cross-company directions and standards.

Goals for Deploying Windows 2000

In 1998, this company's IT office sponsored a project to design a global Windows 2000 Active Directory architecture — a unifying concept across each of the decentralized operating companies. Representative groups from several of the operating companies focused on Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Professional architecture and deployment, and then integrated when necessary and appropriate. The parent company was tasked with developing a common framework that would be adopted as needed by each separate operating company.

Table 1.3 summarizes the IT goals of this organization, and includes the reasons why this organization chose Windows 2000 to meet their goals.

Table 1.3 IT Goals for a Large Multinational Manufacturer

Goals	What Windows 2000 Offers
Establish a common IT reference that all operating company IT groups can use to establish a global multioperator model.	The forest architecture of Active Directory provides a single logon point and Global Catalog capabilities.
Establish one common directory service that can be used by all operating companies.	Active Directory is flexible, extensible, and customizable to accommodate the IT and business needs of separate operating companies.
Establish one common model for migrating from the Windows NT environment to Windows 2000.	Availability of Remote Install technologies and other remote or automatic installation tools such as Systems Management Server.
Conduct a pilot rollout that can be used as an implementation standard for all IT groups in other operating companies.	The capability to clone a security principal from another Windows NT domain, and the security identifier (SID) history features that enable the safe move to a pilot environment with rollback options.
Establish one common client operating system that can be used for all operating companies.	A common security model for desktop and portable computers. Plug and Play capability. Common hardware support. Group Policy, IntelliMirror, and other client management tools administered through Active Directory.