Meet Sumeeth Evans. By day, Evans is an IT Manager of the Collegiate Housing Services (CHS). But just as soon as an Windows operating system upgrade is afoot, Evans becomes the Windows Vista Hero, an untamed IT Professional Champion. And Microsoft has put one of it's greatest storytellers on this case. Advertising the Vista Wow and the support infrastructure designed to streamline the migration to Microsoft's latest operating system has fallen onto Baldwin Ng, Sr. Product Manager, Microsoft Solution Accelerators Team.

"Whether you are seriously considering moving your desktops to Windows Vista or just simply contemplating about it, I highly encourage you to grab your favorite latte or beverage, sit back and read about this great story - one that illustrates how an IT pro had become an instant hero in this company," Baldwin Ng explained.

Of course that the heroism in question is intimately connected with one of the Redmond company's free solutions accelerators set in place to lend a helping hand with the transition from Windows XP to Windows Vista. Sumeeth Evans is in fact praised for deploying the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment solution accelerator. Microsoft is currently at version 2.1 of its automated software tool designed to assess the readiness of the machines on a corporate network in relation to the desktop deployment and migration to Windows Vista and the 2007 Office System.

"Late last year (2006), Sumeeth started planning for migrating his company's computers to Windows Vista but estimated that it could cost $76,000 to get the job done - he assumed that most of his Windows XP machines might not support Windows Vista due the hardware requirements. Fortunately, he joined the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment beta program and found out after using this assessment tool that 70% of his 3-year-old Windows XP machines could run Windows Vista with no or only minor upgrades! Yes, that's the majority of his PCs," Baldwin Ng stated.

Windows Vista Hardware Assessment 2.1 can scan and evaluate up to 25,000 PCs concomitantly, as long as they all share the same domain/workgroup. The tool will then report on the hardware configurations analyzed, and the application and driver compatibility for the upcoming Vista and Office 2007 installations. And it will also turn you into a hero, as was the case for Sumeeth Evans.

"Needless to say, his manager was pleasantly surprised with the readiness results and the huge savings in the hardware replacement costs that Sumeeth virtually became the IT HERO of the company," Baldwin Ng concluded.