Examine planning and purchasing
Before making purchasing decisions, organizations should carefully plan their requirements for new systems. Most organizations have a mix of old and new systems. They can replace some of these systems with new equipment and upgrade others to Windows 10 or Windows 11. Upgrades require careful planning to ensure they work correctly and efficiently. During the upgrade process, you should correct any previous operating system misconfigurations.
The Planning stage includes the following:
- Computer strategy. This includes policies such as image and hardware standardization, environment design, replacement frequency, mobile device versus desktop usage, and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies.
- Computer selection. This process involves choosing hardware, software, and peripherals. Additionally, it includes design configuration and application compatibility testing.
- Deployment methods. Each deployment method includes inherent costs to support that method. Often, multiple deployment methods are used to accommodate different scenarios. You may need to determine whether a cloud-based solution addresses your deployment requirements, or what requirements are needed for a device to enroll.
- Demand forecasting. This is an organization’s attempt at predicting its future computing resource requirements so that it can determine the resources that it will need to purchase.
- Design configuration. This process determines which new features you will use and how you will incorporate them into the overall plan. The new tools, resources, and available settings can help dramatically simplify configuration processes.
Purchasing is the process of obtaining personnel, material, services, or property from a vendor through authorized means. It is the action or process of acquiring items at the operational level. The purchasing process includes negotiation, contracts, vendor management, shipping, and disposal of packaging materials.
During the Purchasing stage, there are several decision points that will affect the overall cost of the deployment:
- Hardware. Hardware typically represents approximately half of all the costs in the purchase-phase of the computer life cycle.
- Software. Software costs include productivity applications, antivirus software, messaging tools, and groupware.
- Accessories. Accessories include a wide range of computer-related supplies, such as cables, power supplies, keyboards, mice, laptop bags, docking stations, and secure-access cards.
- Deployment processes. The chosen deployment method will directly impact the overall deployment cost. Additional costs can include storage requirements of file servers and hard disk drives, USB flash drives, blank DVDs, and providing for greater bandwidth for pushing large images and user data across a network.
- Hardware staging. After the systems arrive, you must prepare them for deployment. This includes securely and properly storing, unpacking, inspecting, and inventorying the systems. You should set aside the necessary space for staging the newly purchased hardware before it arrives.