Case study: Windows 8 answers BT's efficiency call

BT's Peter Scott gives Danny Palmer the inside story behind the company's decision to equip 6,000 Openreach engineers with Windows 8 mobile computers

BT is one of the world’s biggest telecommunications firms, providing broadband, phone, television and IT services to millions of homes and businesses. The firm’s thousands of Openreach engineers are responsible for keeping its access network running, and hence their efficiency is of paramount importance to the company.

With this in mind, BT decided recently that it was high time it upgraded its engineers’ Windows XP mobile computers. It opted to replace them with Windows 8-based Panasonic Toughbooks.

“When we looked at the requirements, we decided Windows 8 would work because it delivers a lot of that highly mobile functionality, like longer battery life, and fast boot up and connect times,” Peter Scott, director end user technology and security at BT, told Computing.

Following a successful trial, BT deployed 6,000 of the Toughbooks. Adopting Windows 8 wasn’t without teething problems, but was a mostly smooth transition from XP, Scott said.

“In 2011 when we saw the first developer preview version of Windows 8, [we found it to be] surprisingly stable and mature. I think that’s based on the fact that it’s Windows 7 with some functionality on top, rather than a brand new system that’s been reinvented from the ground up,” he said.

Scott told Computing that using tablets was considered, but the engineers ultimately preferred being able to use a keyboard.

“We looked at lots of different devices; we felt the Panasonic was a good fit for the engineers to use and they felt it was a good system. We offered them true tablet devices without a keyboard and they said ‘No, we want something that we can also use like a normal laptop’.”

The Toughbook’s performance and versatility were major selling points, he added.

“The fast boot makes a tremendous difference, the ability to resume from sleep very quickly and reliably makes a lot of difference.”

The Toughbooks’ reversible screen means the device can be used in either standard “clamshell mode” or like a tablet.

“When it’s not possible to use it in clamshell mode, then the ability to configure it in that tablet mode can make a difference. This ability can make updating forms and jobs, and inputting data far quicker and easier to do.”

In short, Scott said, efficiency has improved because Windows 8 “gets IT out of the way of our engineers getting on with their jobs”.

“Windows 8 has enabled us to get to a position where the engineer isn’t waiting for the IT to do something; for it to connect or to boot up or anything like that. They’re able to quickly get done what they need to get done on the Toughbook, then get on with doing their work, which in turn allows us to roll things out more quickly,” he said.

Scott said the rollout has helped to ease pressure on technical support team.

“The XP machines were getting old, they were getting slow and when you’ve got something that’s not performing well, then a new device with a modern operating system all helps,” he said.

A new secure login system has also helped to reduce support calls.

“Previously on our old XP machines engineers had to use one-time passwords, so they had to get a token out and type it out. We had a token that could break or go wrong, but that can’t happen now as we’re using a smartcard within the machine. It’s less problematic for us as an infrastructure, which is good,” said Scott.

With Windows 8 still a relatively new ecosystem for enterprises, Scott believes BT is only just beginning to uncover its full potential for Openreach’s engineers and the company as a whole.

“The exciting thing for us is starting to take some of those legacy applications – those big monolithic applications that were really quite complex – and turning them into very simple full screen touch-based applications,” Scott explained.

“So that’s definitely something we’re looking at going forward. Turning things into simple, very clean applications that do just what you want we certainly see as a big enabler.”

@DannyJPalmer