AMEX GBT uses ReadyWorks  automation to cut time of Windows updates

Challenge: A team at American Express Global Business Travel (AMEX GBT), one of the world’s largest travel and event management companies, was charged with managing 20,000+ endpoints. Following a Windows 10 migration the team was becoming overwhelmed by the pace of constant Windows updates.

Traditionally migrations were multi-year projects which involved a large team of consultants and employees. But even a team of this size was unable to keep up with the new pace, when reliant on manual processes and inefficient tools. This led to growing concerns around security and compliance exposure.

AMEX GBT wanted a platform that could manage the process end-to-end, one that was intuitive and easy to use by current and future teams and one that could continually deliver a modern workspace. Additionally, the team wanted to ensure that the organization they partnered with, would work with them to build out their workflows and help with platform configuration.

“Using a manual process to manage the ongoing requirements of Windows Servicing for 20,000+ endpoints was not a sustainable option. We needed a solution that significantly reduced the effort required for this, reduced our security and compliance exposure, and improved client servicing.”

Solution: Following evaluation through a series of pilots the team turned to ReadyWorks to automate the entire process including testing, communications, deployment, and validation. ReadyWorks was ultimately selected based upon its close alignment with Microsoft solutions, its usability, and its comprehensive approach to Windows Servicing automation.

Using ReadyWorks, AMEX GBT was able to:

• Regain 64 hours per week for two full time team members.
• Allow users to rapidly take advantage of the latest Windows features.
• Reduce security and compliance exposure.
• Improve the end user experience.

ReadyWorks enabled this through:

• System Integration: ReadyWorks connected to Microsoft endpoint solutions including SCCM, Intune, Desktop Analytics and O365.
• Data Intelligence: The team had clear visibility across the program and access to audit trail reports that they could provide to the compliance team if required.
• Orchestration & Automation: Working closely with AMEX GBT, the ReadyWorks customer success team documented the end-to-end workflows for different user categories and configured that within ReadyWorks. This allowed the team to leverage end-to-end automation, including population of SCCM collections, communications, scheduling (users could self-schedule), deployment rollback (if needed), and reporting. This resulted in substantial savings in cost and effort and allowing the team to maintain the pace of Windows updates and ensure full system availability following each update.

“ReadyWorks allowed us to free up 80% of the calendar for two full-time resources, automate servicing workflows, and provide a real-time audit trail for our compliance team.”