When new employees start at a company, laptops are stolen or PCs are due for replacement, that usually means the company's IT department has to set up one or more new workplaces. Until recently, this involved a process that took a lot of time and effort to keep workplaces within the company standardized and up to date. "The IT department often had its hands full with very practical things," says Ives Ledegen, Technology Expert at Realdolmen. "These tasks included removing the pre-installed software from a new PC, setting up an operating system and the desired applications, and then sending it to the right branch or department."
Today, things are completely different. A modern workplace needs a modern deployment. "Windows 10 Autopilot puts zero-touch deployment into practice," says Ledegen, who demonstrated how this approach works at a customer event in just a few minutes. "You can immediately achieve the desired deployment." In concrete terms, this takes three steps. The hardware supplier registers the device. The company's IT department must create and assign a profile. All end-users have to do is log in – and the deployment takes place automatically.
Time savings for everyone
The advantage for the IT department is that, as a rule, it only has to define the roles and policies once – and no longer for each individual user. End users also save time. After all, the delivery time for a new device is shortened significantly. In just a few minutes, end users can start using their new workplace themselves, without involving the IT department and without the technical hassle that used to be inevitable. Does this mean traditional deployment is a thing of the past? "Not necessarily," says Ledegen. "If a company has more users on-premise than in the cloud, the focus is automatically more on the devices than on the users. In that case, the traditional way of working with Microsoft SCCM remains appropriate. But if the company is fully in the cloud, Autopilot offers the best solution."
Get more out of Office 365
Realdolmen has long been the IT infrastructure partner for Pidy, a specialist in baked puff pastry products. "We now use Office 365 for email," says IT System Engineer David Lambrecht.
"We're looking further into how we can expand and combine the use of the solution, including with SharePoint. The ideal workplace is obviously an environment where you can access all data and applications at any time, from any location and with any device. But if you want to achieve that, you inevitably run into security and bandwidth issues. Nevertheless, we're very interested and would like to look at what is feasible."