German Luxury automobile maker BMW has been spending nearly all of 2009 testing Windows 7 for its 85,000 Windows XP machines, with plans for full deployment by 2011. The goal: better remote management and a more productive mobile workforce. BMW has been running Windows XP in its broad client environment since 2001. Happy with XP, the automaker passed on Windows Vista, so its planning for Windows 7 started early, says Bernhard Huber, BMW's Head of IT Workplace Systems. "We identified a lot of functional and monetary benefits of Windows 7 early on," says Huber, adding that BMW first started testing the Windows 7 beta in the first quarter of this year and has increased the number of pilot users since the RTM (release to manufacturing) version of Windows 7 became available in late July.

Full Article: CIO