Last week we rolled out the first cut of our Windows 7 SOE image to a set of closed pilot users. There are 27 closed pilot users in total, representing a good cross section of users and hardware types from each line of business. Nearly all the closed pilot users are located in the same location – predominantly to keep them close at hand in case I need to give them any extra attention throughout the pilot.

The closed pilot image consists of the RC build (7100) of Windows 7, and 21 Tier 1 applications, including Office 2007 Enterprise, Office Communicator, Live Meeting client and the conferencing add-in for Outlook, Forefront Client Security and all the usual readers and players that are typically required.

Closed Pilot is as much about proving the deployment process, as it is about getting valuable feedback and acceptance from the users. Feedback regarding the deployment process has been extremely encouraging. The process essentially involved deploying the SCCM 2007 client to the target workstations and advertising a Task Sequence to a collection containing those workstations.

For each user, depending on the amount of data that need to be handled, the process took about an hour. In that time, the Task Sequence captured the user’s state, laid down the SOE image, deployed role specific Tier 2 applications, installed hardware specific utilities and drivers that couldn’t be included in the driver repository, and restored the user’s state. Apart from a handful of things that we missed in the build and had to configure manually (that are now on the to-do list before open pilot) – there was nothing left for the users to do other than log back in and enjoy their new OS J

Open Pilot will start sometime in the next few weeks, depending on how quickly Windows 7 RTM code becomes available to us. Then the fun really starts…

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