By Tim Ferguson, 31 May 2007 14:17
Online shopping giant Tesco.com has migrated 2,000 desktops to Windows Vista with increased security and energy saving among the key reasons for the switch.
The retailer migrated the PCs to Vista Ultimate edition in January, following several months of testing.
Tesco.com IT and new technologies manager, Nick Lansley, explained there were three factors influencing the decision to move onto the new operating system.
A major consideration was security, of both customer information - such as payment details and addresses - and source code for the website.
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Lansley said: "It's really about our concerns for security - we wanted to have every base covered. Our source code is very important to us."
With company laptops often taken home by staff, Vista's network access protection tools were particularly useful according to Lansley. Vista's upgraded security features help make sure "nothing yucky" gets on the Tesco.com network, he said.
The group was also keen to get to grips with Vista to understand how Tesco.com customers using it might approach the site differently.
The final reason for switching was potential environmental benefits. Lansley said: "We wanted to see how much energy we could save."
Vista will detect if a computer is inactive and automatically switch to sleep mode, saving energy.
The PCs used by Tesco.com run at 300 watts when fully operational - but at just six watts in sleep mode.
Staff don't always think to put their PCs on standby but as Lansley said: "With Vista, it all comes naturally."
A more accurate picture of the power savings will be clearer following a technical audit of the 2,000 computers due to take place soon.
Tesco.com was part of the Vista early adopter programme, with testing starting in September last year, several months before its official launch.
Two people in each work team installed Vista to allow them to get used to its new features and understand any issues with the migration. After this testing period, full migration took place in the second week of January.
Although the rest of Tesco group remains on Windows XP, Tesco.com was able to complete the transition fast due to its smaller size - 400 people in a single building.
Comments
There are 6 comments. Join the discussion
1. Dick Rowley
Err, you mean Windows XP didn't have the ability to go to standby automatically? Must be something wrong with my laptop then...
2. Nick Lansley
With us it was more a case of Vista going safely into standby yet being instantly available again at the click of a mouse.
XP could do this, but because it seemed to take a long time to come out of standby, and sometimes not be as stable, users were wary of using the feature.
With Vista that wariness has evaporated completely. Most users now tell me that they only have to restart after a Windows update.
It's fantastic wandering around the Tesco.com floor seeing computers on standby at every desk where the user has gone to a meeting or to lunch. You can imagine what the power savings are going to be when we conduct our audit soon!
3. Lionel A Smith
I agree Dick, using power management as a reason for moving to Vista is a nonsense and makes me wonder how much MS lopped off Tesco’s bill by their agreeing to air such tripe.
For the average user a move to Vista is full of economic and environmental impacts where many still useful and serviceable peripherals and software, some of which may be irreplaceable (I am a Minolta DSLR and film scanner user – what hope have I of updated software).
I may be wrong about the lack of support in Vista for ‘legacy’ peripherals but my experience with XP whereby a perfectly good Epson inkjet printer had limited functionality with the supplied XP driver does not give me confidence that Microsoft and peripheral vendors will do the right thing and be the cause of much early landfill.
4. misceng
Not power management just stock management is what I want from Tesco. It is remarkable that the store which opened near me about a year ago has managed to remove from its stock lines a remarkable number of items I try to buy regularly so I have to be environmentally unfriendly and do a 6 mile round trip to Sainsbury to get what I need.
5. Roy Judd
Have I got this straight? 2000 desktops; 400 people. That’s five desktops per person, not including the laptops often taken home by staff... Couldn’t you have just levelled out at one computer per person and cut your power requirement by 80% in the process? Now that would be an energy saving to crow about!
6. anonymous
Humm, 300watts..vista saving energy ?
considering the specs of the new pc's required to run vista..what about energy usage when not in stand-by?
how long are the breaks at tesco ? and i would expect a company so much into energy saving would require it's employees to switch off at night/weekends not just leave them on standby.