2,000 computers. 3 countries. 10 weeks. Zero downtime.
How a compliance deadline that looked impossible was delivered early, on budget, without the business feeling a thing.
Half the fleet, three countries, three months.
Probe Group runs outsourced customer service, collections and processing, with almost 5,000 workstations across 3 countries. Their clients include some of the world's most security-conscious organisations. Those clients audit their suppliers hard, and Probe's contracts depend on passing.
To meet their compliance requirements, Probe had to upgrade more than half their workstation fleet, over 2,000 machines, within three months. That alone is a big job. The conditions made it harder:
- Machines spread across three countries and multiple time zones
- Different security levels in different parts of the business, including PCI-DSS and Australian Government IRAP requirements
- Several other major projects running at the same time
- No automated deployment system in place
- And a hard rule: zero business interruption. Probe answers other companies' customers around the clock. The phones don't stop for an upgrade.
Audit first. Then build the system that does the heavy lifting.
We started with an audit of every workstation across the whole operation. Before anyone touched a machine, Probe had a clear, accurate picture of exactly what they owned and what state it was in.
Then we built the system to do the heavy lifting. We recommended and implemented Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), the platform large organisations use to manage thousands of computers from one place, designed around Probe's security requirements and network layout so the rollout could run fast without cutting corners.
On top of that we built a locked-down standard Windows build that met the Australian Signals Directorate's desktop security policies, with patch management enforced from day one. Every machine got the same secure setup, automatically. It's the same thinking behind our managed IT support and cyber security services today: standardise, automate, and prove it.
Delivered on time, on budget, with nothing broken.
- 2,000+ workstations upgraded or deployed within 10 weeks of project start, with no extra budget and zero business impact
- New machines now deploy remotely across the entire network, and one click pushes an application to the whole fleet
- Consistent, compliant security policies on every workstation, with patch management enforced automatically
- Faster imaging and far fewer staff hours per deployment
- Ongoing visibility of every workstation, so IT decisions run on data instead of guesswork
The team provided the expertise, flexibility and project management that always left us confident of a successful project.
Got a compliance deadline and a fleet to move?
The software versions have moved on since this project. The method hasn't: audit first, design the system, automate the rollout, and prove it's compliant at the end.