Automated Deployment


Automated deployment takes in and benefits from a number of faculties including:

All of these areas need to be addressed and have working procedures to enable a full hands off desktop estate that requires zero desk side visits or lengthy support investigation.


Why use Embrionic

Embrionic can help organisations that want to fully investigate how they should move forward in providing these tools or just a subset. We have delivered solutions based around these technologies for many years and can offer the following benefits:

Build Standardisation has been our mantra for over 10 years and we have moved many customers from Windows 3.11 to NT to 2000 to XP without resorting to multiple images for various hardware platforms.

Embrionic have genuine experience in delivering builds from script based techniques through to the latest developments with images and already have practical knowledge of Windows Vista and it's deployment tools. We work with Embrionic directdeploy™ as well as the BDD, RIS, Ghost (though not recommended), Scripted Install  and present the pros and cons of each.

Our migration skills are second to none and we can show you how we have implemented group policy and user settings at many customers to get the most automated approach possible.

We always do our application packaging in house and therefore understand the issues that most packages will cause from the smallest applications such as Adobe Acrobat through to Reuters financial products and customer developed applications.

Embrionic can advise you on the best methods of delivering these applications to your users and have delivered projects that use Embrionic directdeploy™ , Active Directory, Systems Management Server, LANDesk and Alitiris. Please read our Whitepaper on Application Delivery Options for more information and recommendations on some of these.


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Remote Installation Services

Embrionic can provide Microsoft Remote Installation Services (RIS) experience to help organisations deliver their desktop or server operating system builds in a fast, automated process using either SysPrep or unattended based scripted builds. We can enable an organisation to either have engineers kick off the delivery of a build or allow the users to initiate the process providing flexibility and reducing the support burden.

We recommend RIS in small environments as a low cost, fast to configure solution over a well connected network rather than for deploying across multiple sites - RIS does not work well in routed environments.

RIS can be coupled with Active Directory for application deployments to deliver a centrally controlled and automated environment at little extra cost than the out of the box software.

For larger installations you should consider Embrionic directdeploy™ , Business Desktop Deployment based installations or a number of alternative options.


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User Environment Migration

One of the major issues with moving to a new desktop platform is ensuring that the users “profile” can be moved successfully from the old platform to the new. The combination of users’ local data files, their settings for applications and operating system preferences are referred to as the “user state”

Some organisations choose not to migrate any settings and some want to ensure that the new desktop looks and feels identical to the old. 

Embrionic have spent years performing desktop migrations and deployments and have addressed the issue of user state migrations many times. Our experience of the major Microsoft tools and third party products enable us to deliver a flexible solution with many in house techniques and script components to ensure specific un-addressed areas are dealt with efficiently and effectively. Embrionic can also provide the ability to automate these procedures and processes so that they can be rolled into the “deploy desktop” task for zero touch delivery.

Please consider this area carefully when planning your desktop migration.


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