Energy Producer Cuts Costs With Operating System Upgrade

The national oil company of Saudi Arabia, Saudi Aramco, is a petroleum enterprise that spans the globe, with affiliates and subsidiaries in several different countries. Aramco maintains a Windows XP operating system environment of more than 50,000 desktop and laptop computers. Always searching for ways to reduce costs and increase productivity, Aramco wanted to explore how to centralize its network for better IT reliability. To improve its IT environment, Aramco chose to upgrade its computers across the entire corporation to the Windows Vista Enterprise operating system. With an aggressive, phased deployment, Aramco plans to install Windows Vista to 50 percent of its computers by the end of 2008, and will complete all upgrades in 2009. Aramco is also upgrading to the 2007 Microsoft Office system.