Operating Systems Usage in Huffman

Huffman Trucking is a privately owned national trucking company. Huffman Trucking is based in Cleveland, Ohio and is founded in 1936. Huffman Trucking operations are spread across U.S.A. Its logistical hubs are located in Los Angeles, CA, St. Louis, Missouri, and Bayonne, New Jersey. Its maintenance facility is located in Cleveland, Ohio. Majority of its IT infrastructure is concentrated in Missouri and Ohio.

This paper aims to outline the list of operating systems used at Huffman Trucking. In addition, this paper presents the possible reasons to choose the current operating systems and the implications of using the current operating systems.

Huffman Trucking uses Windows XP, Windows 200 Professional, Windows 98, Windows 95, Mac OS and Windows 3.1 operating systems on its client workstations. Furthermore, it uses Windows NT server Novell Netware 4.11 operating systems on its servers to manage its network.

Windows XP Professional

Huffman Trucking is using Windows XP Professional Edition operating system on 10 workstations in Missouri and 20 workstations in Ohio facilities (Virtual Organization, n.d.). Windows XP is the most successful client operating system release by Microsoft (Figueiredo, 2007). Huffman may have chosen Windows XP because it is one of the latest stable versions of client operating systems available at the time. Windows XP has a broad feature set integrated from business user centric features from Windows 2000 Professional and home user centric ease-of-use features from Windows 98. Some of its notable features are smart card support, 64-bit support, Remote Desktop, rich user interface, plug and play, Bluetooth support. There are no severe negative implications in using this operating system. However, Huffman need to deal with co-existence issues between Windows XP and legacy operating systems such as Windows 95 used on majority of the workstations in Missouri and Ohio facilities. One of its primary limitations is its limited availability after June 2008.

Windows 2000 Professional

Huffman uses Windows 2000 Professional operating system on 30 workstations at Missouri and Ohio facilities (Virtual Organization, n.d.). This operating system is primarily geared towards business users and it is a predecessor for Windows XP. Some of its key features are standards-based