CA Southern Africa has announced the availability of CA Technologies’ CA Desktop Migration Manager (CA DMM) which assists resource-constrained IT departments to quickly and easily transition from Windows XP to more secure operating systems.The product is a scalable, easy to use migration solution for the management, upgrade, and maintenance of laptop and desktop systems. It is a free download available for all enterprises affected by Microsoft’s decision to discontinue support of Window XP. Additionally, the solution offers zero-touch migration when used with CA Client Automation.

“Without on-going technical support and security updates from Microsoft, Windows XP exposes our customers to vulnerabilities and significant risks,” says Andrea Lodolo, CTO, CA Southern Africa. “CA DMM provides our customers with a solution to migrate to modern operating systems to combat these security loopholes, reduce migration time and minimise productivity losses for their employees.”

System migration challenges are particularly relevant today as organisations strive to keep their IT systems productive, competitive, updated and secure. The challenge of recreating users’ unique desktop environment is compounded when executing upgrades or enhancements for thousands of PCs.

This includes retaining and transferring: system and application settings, network and printer settings, data files and folders, email address books, preferences and more. When performed manually, this process is time-consuming, labour intensive, error-prone and costly, thus impeding the adoption of new technology.

CA DMM performs the migration—including unique bookmarks, address books and even personalised background images —seamlessly, so it’s business-as-usual for customers without having to reconfigure systems. With this solution, customers can migrate to newer systems efficiently and secure operating systems while increasing technician productivity, decreasing user downtime and reduce service desk calls.

Additionally, CA DMM is agentless and can be used with other lifecycle management products as part of the overall migration process.