Listen to this articleBelow is our recent interview with Thomas Koll, CEO at Laplink Software:
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction of your company?
A: Laplink has been a global leader in consumer, SMB, and enterprise PC migration software, and has earned the loyalty and trust of millions of organizations and customers worldwide for nearly 40 years. Our company’s PCmover software, which is the only software of its kind recommended by Microsoft®, Intel®, and all major PC manufacturers, saves time and budget, reduces migration risks, and increases efficiency. Only PCmover’s proprietary technology includes full selectivity that transfers data, applications, and settings from an old PC to a new one, even if the two PCs run different versions of Windows.
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Q: Tell us more about PCmover Enterprise and advantages over Microsoft USMT. What are the highlights of your recent announcement?
A: Laplink’s PCmover Enterprise is specifically designed to help large organizations with their PC migration projects and has been proven to save organizations hours of IT time and resources throughout PC hardware and operating systems refreshes. In fact, organizations can save more than 60% on both hard and soft costs by using PCmover Enterprise. PCmover significantly reduces end-user downtime and associated IT labor costs, decreases post migration helpdesk calls, and can reduce common operational costs like shipping, storage, and third-party services.
Recently, we conducted a survey of IT managers and staff who are using Microsoft User State Migration Tool (USMT) to upgrade PCs to the latest version of Windows and found that most prefer using PCmover Enterprise over Microsoft’s USMT.
Our survey found that while many appreciated USMT ’s time-saving benefits, 25% of respondents noted it was difficult to implement. A similar number indicated USMT was too complex for many IT staff members, while nearly 30% described USMT as an “inaccurate” solution. More than half (51%) of the USMT users surveyed stated they desire support for transferring applications — something USMT does not provide. IT staff at 55% of these companies must manually reinstall applications for end users leading to the request for application-transfer capability in a migration tool. The majority of respondents also indicated a preference for increased vendor assistance, training, and technical support for their PC refresh projects.
Because USMT is actually a toolkit and specifically will not transfer applications, there is a mismatch between IT’s desires and USMT’s capabilities. This is apparent in the survey responses. And that’s why we provide PCmover Enterprise with full support for automatically transferring applications. Plus, our company is known for its first-class technical support, which provides help with configuring PCmover to meet the specific needs of each customer.
The survey respondents included specific comments about USMT including, “It (USMT) works, but it’s not pretty.” Other IT staff and managers declared there is a “high learning curve,” and many said that USMT “is powerful, but hard to use.” Microsoft acknowledges that USMT isn’t the ideal solution for every PC refresh scenario, emphasizing it is intended for “large scale” situations where customization is not required and suggests PCmover be considered as an alternative.
Our survey results underscore the significant pain points IT managers and staff are facing as they try to quickly and efficiently transfer data, settings, and applications as part of a PC refresh project. Even if USMT works well on half of the PC deployments in an organization, it still presents post-migration difficulties. We designed PCmover Enterprise to be fully customizable and flexible to meet the needs of all PC refresh projects.
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Q: What can we expect from your company in the next 6 months? What are your plans?
A: At Laplink, we are always evolving and always thinking about our customers’ needs. As everyone knows, a big trend recently is the increase in distributed workforce with more remote workers than ever. For companies of all sizes, this is a major pain point for IT trying to cost-effectively support these employees. We are soon releasing a new solution for remote device management that includes support for remote PC refresh projects. I believe this will dramatically lower the cost and ease this pain point for IT. We’ll be sharing more about this in a matter of weeks.
Q: What is one of the best things about your company that people might not know about?
A: One of the best things about Laplink is our company’s outstanding customer service and technical support. We are proud to be known throughout the industry for our first-class technical support and responsiveness to our customers’ needs.
