SHI elevates the employee and customer experience with a fast, smooth Windows 11 Pro deployment

Globe-spanning solutions provider leads with innovation

SHI, originally known as Software House International, is one of the technology industry’s leading value-added resellers (VARs), with annual revenue of more than $14 billion and thousands of customers worldwide using Microsoft technologies. An important Microsoft partner for more than 30 years, SHI is also the largest certified Minority/Women Owned Business Enterprise (MWBE) in the United States. Matt Fisher, Vice President of Marketing at SHI, says, “We’re here to help customers solve what’s next as they address their IT operations, cybersecurity, infrastructure, and workforce computing challenges.”

With one of the most mature Microsoft practices in the partner channel, SHI supports customers across the entire portfolio of Microsoft solutions as they select, purchase, license, deploy, manage, and safeguard technology in their businesses. SHI has the expertise to help them achieve the best possible ROI and take advantage of innovation. The company itself relies extensively on Microsoft solutions and often takes the lead in generating technology benefits that it then goes on to facilitate for customers. Mathew DeWolfe, Senior Director of IT Operations and Service Delivery at SHI, explains, “We’re always looking for ways to improve the user experience and the manageability of software tools, both internally and for our customers. By staying current with the latest Windows version, we can optimize our ability to support customers’ evolving technology environments.”

How to prepare for a predictable, non-disruptive software rollout

In a recent project, SHI deployed Windows 11 Pro to its entire global workforce of about 6,100 team members in under three months. “You need to be ready for challenges when you perform a major upgrade like this, but our Windows 11 Pro rollout went as smoothly as we could have dreamed,” says DeWolfe. “It’s a huge win for our technology users and the entire organization.”

SHI’s IT services organization applied its project management expertise to achieve a rapid, smooth deployment. Matthew Sierp, Senior Manager of the Service Desk at SHI, notes, “To achieve flawless Windows 11 Pro performance, it was critical to assign the right resources, define an effective testing strategy relying on expert testers, and immediately heed incoming feedback to make any necessary changes.”

As the Windows 11 Pro rollout began, technology specialists at SHI conducted testing while connected on industry forums with other organizations that had Windows 11 Pro deployments in process or recently completed them. That provided an opportunity to anticipate and address potential issues. When testers and users confirmed that the initial pilot project was a success, SHI broadened the deployment to technology champions across the worldwide organization, and finally made Windows 11 Pro available to everybody.

Timing software distribution to expanding user populations

During deployment, the IT services team at SHI prioritized delivering Windows 11 Pro to the many employees using a standard bundle of solutions comprising Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and SharePoint. Building on the success of that project phase, IT gave the green light for the delivery of the new operating system to a smaller group of team members who use more and highly specialized software tools. “We’re extremely sensitive to the quality of users’ experience,” says DeWolfe. “That meant timing the deployment was crucial, because we didn’t want to disrupt their work. We closely followed Microsoft guidance for how to plan an operating system upgrade.”

IT services didn’t have to manually install software on employees’ devices. “Windows 11 Pro is an upgrade that users receive as a Windows Update for Business,” DeWolfe adds. “While there was no need to roll out the software image by using our own resources, we still needed to schedule and fine-tune the distribution. Windows 11 Pro ran flawlessly on team members’ computers with no significant issues reported. I should mention that Microsoft is doing an outstanding job at packaging these upgrades to allow for efficient, non-disruptive, predictable implementations.”

Expanding the AI practice with Copilot

Along with Windows 11 Pro, SHI licensed Microsoft Copilot in Windows as an additional resource for its AI practice. Over a year ago, the company adopted its own AI solution, MindSpark, based on the Azure OpenAI service. MindSpark is designed to help users in the SHI sales and support organizations better deliver customer success, with prompts and scenarios developed by SHI’s Advanced Solutions Group (ASG).

The strong security of the Azure platform was an important consideration in adopting Azure OpenAI Service without risk to SHI’s intellectual property (IP). A group of testers is currently exploring Copilot to see how well it performs in various usage scenarios while maintaining an excellent user experience. “We want to be as proactive as possible in using AI to do our jobs more efficiently,” says DeWolfe. “Copilot is going to be a powerful tool for us alongside MindSpark, and the early feedback is very positive.”

Modeling and testing now underway will determine the best protocol for preventing employees from inadvertently jeopardizing IP as they use Copilot, which connects to the public cloud. “Copilot is an incremental, yet important step for us on our AI journey,” says Fisher. “SHI is always identifying new use cases for AI, which is a strategic focus for us. We’re very excited about AI that can be native to users’ devices and PCs with neural processing capabilities.”

Highly manageable operating system fortifies security and eases compliance

As a highly visible and renowned technology solutions provider, SHI empowers a world-class IT department to define and demonstrate industry-best practices for effective, safe, and future-resilient adoption of software innovation. For SHI’s IT organization, managing a technology environment with Windows 11 Pro as a cornerstone is a frictionless, productive experience. “The previous operating system was very solid, and we expect Windows 11 Pro to be even better,” comments DeWolfe. “It fits in perfectly with our lifecycle management practices for users and devices and interoperates well with our other technologies and supporting services.” The company follows a regular cadence for hardware refreshes, so team members always have the best devices for their roles. For that reason, desktops, and laptops were already fully compatible with Windows 11 Pro. “We rely on Microsoft Intune augmented by tracking systems we created at SHI in order to manage endpoints in our network and deliver superior user experiences,” DeWolfe adds.

Serving customers around the globe, SHI complies with many legal requirements and regulatory frameworks that apply to industries, countries, and regional and local jurisdictions. The organization’s compliance practice works hand in hand with the security team to maintain the integrity of sensitive information and systems. “We found the security features built into Windows 11 Pro intriguing, and they are a great complement to our internally developed tools,” says DeWolfe. “Overall, Windows 11 Pro helps us strengthen our security posture and provides the visibility needed to meet compliance audit requirements with ease and confidence.”

Accelerating transformations in the technology experience

Windows 11 Pro blended elegantly into the activities of SHI employees everywhere and made some frequent steps—such as connecting to and disconnecting from a docking station or using multiple monitors—more robust. Sierp notes, “The product was very well received, no matter whether people received it over a VPN or at an office location. Our users are not bringing any Windows-related issues at all to the attention of IT support.” Following its own highly successful Windows 11 Pro deployment, SHI is confidently plowing ahead with assisting its customer community in implementing the upgrade. In one customer project, the IT team at SHI migrated a company’s entire fleet of 7,000 devices to Windows 11 Pro in less than eight weeks.

SHI stakeholders see that Windows 11 Pro aligns with their strategy for driving continuous improvement in the employee and customer experience. They also know that customers can fall behind the wave of beneficial innovation if they delay their Windows 11 Pro migration. For such organizations, SHI has embarked on an educational campaign whose tagline is, “It can’t wait.” Fisher notes, “We always aim to be great partners for our customers, and that motivates us to help them forestall challenges and reap the full benefit of evolving technology. Organizations tend to run into problems when they wait to upgrade until the last possible moment, when support for older solutions is about to end. That’s why we’re doing whatever we can to enable our customers running Windows, and every other business looking for expert assistance, to take advantage of Windows 11 Pro as soon as they can.”