In 2004, HSBC launched its Common Windows Desktop initiative with a goal of reducing by 20 percent the $500 million annual cost of maintaining and supporting 300,000 desktop computers through rigorous standardization. To date, the firm has cut annual costs by $50 million to $75 million and expects that savings to increase to $100 million by the time the new desktop standard deployment is finished at the end of 2007.

Prior to the launch of the 2004 initiative, decisions as to which technology to use were made at the local level, with each of the hundreds of companies within the HSBC Group potentially having its own data center, Windows domain, desktop standard, and software deployment tools among other inconsistencies. The 2004 initiative called for a single worldwide desktop image based on the Windows XP Professional operating system and a single worldwide directory forest based on the Active Directory service in the Windows Server 2003 operating system.

Along with the technology, the firm needed a plan for centralized deployment and support of a unified environment. HSBC also wanted to link installed software to individual users rather than to a desktop so employees could move from computer to computer without added time and cost.

“In our headquarters building alone, the effective number of office moves was the same as everyone moving at least once last year,” said Matthew O’Neill, group head of distributed systems for HSBC Global IT Operations. “Not only did we have to pay for technicians to move each person’s PC, but in many cases the users of those systems lost hours or days of productivity as their PCs were moved.”

HSBC decided that the Microsoft System Center family of IT management solutions, including Systems Management Server 2003 for desktop management and Operations Manager 2005 for server monitoring, had the scalability, security, reliability, and integration needed to support the Common Windows Desktop environment.

The Common Windows Desktop initiative got final approval in September 2004. Deployment began in early 2005, and by the end of 2006 more than 75 percent of the company’s 300,000 computers were running the new standard desktop image.

Currently, HSBC uses Systems Management Server to support 225,000 desktops in 25 countries. During 2007, HSBC will work to bring its remaining 75,000 desktops into its new Common Windows Desktop environment and under management with Systems Management Server, including 40,000 desktops that today run IBM OS/2.

Today, Systems Management Server automatically installs software on desktops; software updates are centrally deployed; desktop applications are tied to users rather than computers; and billing to business units has been streamlined and centrally managed.