By Ron Coates, 24 August 2004 14:25
NEWS Almost three-quarters of UK IT managers plan to roll out XP SP2 and 63 per cent of them plan to do it before Christmas, according to research by emedia for desktop tools outfit LANDesk.
The predominant reason cited for taking the update was security, particularly the extra security provided for wireless devices.
These results were almost the reverse of the verdict of silicon.com's CIO Jury, where two-thirds of CIOs said that they'd wait and let other companies be the pioneers and one-third said that they'd deploy it for security reasons.
IT managers taking the update will have to put their skates on, however. Rolling out XP SP2 will not be a trivial task and it won't be done overnight.
Jon Gifford, LANDesk technical director, said: "Most organisations haven't considered how long it will take and Microsoft hasn't given them any guidance. To follow good practice; testing it in a small environment, doing a staggered rollout to crucial systems and then a rollout, will take several months.
"Rolling out to laptops and other wireless devices can be tricky -- they're rarely connected and when they are they're slow."
The long-awaited XP SP2 will probably become the top headache for IT managers, if it isn't already. It has been continuously delayed and a series of problems have come to light since its initial release.
There are over 40 popular programs that appear to fall down when exposed to XP SP2 and installations which have custom software or even custom-tweaked software will have to be very careful. It is also said to have an effect on the operation of Internet Explorer and Microsoft has had to develop a special patch so that its CRM software will work with the updated OS.
Comments
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1. anonymous
Installed SP2 and now Internet Explorer crashes all the time, is this how Microsoft tighten security, by making their web browser non-functional!
2. Misha Gopaul
For the majority of people, the benefits clearly outweigh the hassle of deployment. We complained when the operating system was insecure, are we just finding something else to complain about?
The testing process for this service pack should be no different to that of any other, yes there are a few tweaks for a handful of applications, but you can't have your cake and eat it.
3. Dave
Have installed SP2 on my machine. I liked that it has detected my existing AV and firewall and not tried to enforce anything else. Has sorted a couple of problems for me with IE. It may not always be as smooth as I have had it, but like Misha has said, at least Microsoft are making a concerted effort to address the long term security vulnerabilities of their platform. It's not perfect, but it's a big step in the right direction
4. anonymous
We are slowly rolling XP2 out on our lan. About the only ones left to do are the devs. Up to now the only problem has been our phone manager software (port problem) and that was easily sorted.
Anti virus (trend) is running fine.
BTW I have installed the full 272meg version and removed it several times with no apparent problems - perhaps we have good karma here?