When you're talking about a 20,000-user enterprise, doing a desktop operating system upgrade generally gets tossed out. Even with smart deployment and OS push tools, dropping a new OS with fully tested application support on several thousand desktops just costs so much in extra man-hour dollars that most CIOs simply let their next PC purchase take care of things for them.
Servers get upgraded first and as the leases on desktop hardware run out, the new desktops coming in have the new OS already pre-installed so sys admins only have to deploy and test the required business applications before sending them out into the field. Your users may wind up using the previous-generation operating system for a year or more, but that's a small price to pay for not breaking the budget or your CIO's blood pressure.
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