Loads of organisations are really getting into gear for their Windows 7 migration and looking to do things smarter than last time. A lot is being written about how to tackle the process Ruben Spruit recently posted a great article discussing a broad range of challenges associated with all of the choices facing organizations right now. Its not just about the new OS anymore as Virtualization has become a very disruptive part of the process.

Virtualization presents many great opportunities to optimize various aspects of application and desktop management but understanding how best to handle the applications remains  the biggest challenge.

Over the years we have been involved in helping many organizations through the process and have compiled a migration checklist for Windows 7 to help structure some of the thinking and planning that everyone will face when tackling the migration.

I hope this comes in handy for those looking towards Windows 7

Hands up everyone who thinks Windows 7 migration is going to be a nightmare.

It doesn’t have to be at all. It’s a migration, not a death march. It may have some difficult moments but it’s not going to be keeping you awake at night. At least not if you do it properly.

We’ve experienced dozens of major app migrations over the years, so we decided to put together a checklist of tips and resources to make life easier for enterprises. You might have already thought of some of them, others you might have missed.

Do your migration right and you’ll avoid an enterprise-sized headache. Do it wrong and… well, you can imagine.

Get hold of the checklist here.

App-DNA's own Olivier Marschalik wowed the recent Microsoft TechDays event in Paris, with an over subscribed presentation and demo of Appitude. Many thanks to Microsoft's Frederic Meurgey for making App-DNA part of his key presentation on Windows 7 application compatibility - see the story and video here http://www.app-dna.com/microsoft_french_briefing.asp

Great article by Ruben Spruijt on www.brianmadden.com with a step-by-step guide to moving today's apps into tomorrow's world, featuring AppTitude and the role the product plays.

See it here - http://www.brianmadden.com/blogs/rubenspruijt/archive/2010/02/15/think-today-change-tomorrow-your-step-by-step-to-getting-to-the-desktop-of-tomorrow.aspx

It has been fantastic for us to formalise our on-going relationship with Citrix via a global agreement (announced here) this adds to our key agreement with Microsoft and cements App-DNA's capability as an enabling technology. As organizations drive towards Windows 7, 64bit computing and the R2 release of Server 2008 an increasingly important component to the migration is the transformation of how applications are delivered to users. Application virtualization in combination with virtual desktops and Citrix presentation virtualization are often being employed in conjunction to facilitate an agile application management infrastructure where IT can supply applications faster, more robustly and in less time to business users.

The Citrix stack allows organizations to deliver legacy applications via a combination of virtualization techniques and preserve access while embracing Windows 7 as the desktop operating system. App-DNA's technology enables applications to be deployed to the most appropriate platform via the path of least resistance and this means organizations can rapidly adopt the new technologies in less time with reduced disruption.

Previously, testing applications separately for server based environments, windows client, presentation and application virtualization as well as 64bit compatibility was just too complex a prospect for organizations to scale this up to their whole portfolios. AppTitude technology makes this achievable and App-DNA's partnership with the Citrix consulting group will allow more organizations access to demonstrate this new capability in addressing the challenge of application compatibility.

There is a great deal of activity at the moment as companies prepare for Windows 7 rollouts and the flexibility of the Citrix stack in combination with new efficiencies available from Windows 7, Server 2008 and the 64bit environment coupled with AppTitude's ability to accelerate adoption make for an exciting new approach to IT transformation projects.

Ok, by now most people have good stories to tell or have at least heard that Windows 7 is a good thing. Right? Well I though I'd add my own anecdotal experience to the mix.

In my role I have the opportunity to talk to many organisations in varying stages of Windows Vista or Windows 7 adoption or planning. From the outset Windows 7 just felt better and much of the early testing is bearing out expectations for these organisations and in truth its been a bit surprising how strong early adoption has been for Windows 7.

For myself, I have some challenges in the way I use Windows. As evangelist for App-DNA I need to regularly demo and discuss our solution so a stable and responsive OS to support our own product is important. I'm also often testing and demoing early versions of our own software and the combination of OS betas and pre-release software can be challenging at times. Anyone who demos as part of their day jobs knows what I'm talking about.

In the latter part of 2009 when I got my hands on the 64bit RTM bits for Windows 7 combined with a shiny new laptop with a solid state drive (SSD) and things took a turn for the better. I expected some improved performance but the level of improvement was quite surprising. Even more surprising was the lack of issues for running the 64bit version of Windows 7 knowing how problematic driver availability generally is around the release of a new OS.

For those of you not yet familiar with 64bit Windows, here are a few interesting aspects.

1. 16bit apps

16 bit code cannot run on 64 bit Windows. Generally, 16bit apps date back to pre-XP days. There are various reasons for incompatibility but one of the key ones is the passing of 'handles' - these are references which programs use for (amongst other things) the visual windows which you use to interact with the applications. Attempting to pass handles from a 64bit environment to 16bit apps causes loss of data and causes application failure. Some organisations maintain old apps over long periods of time and the presence of 16bit code can sometimes be a bit surprising but for most home users 16bit issue are less likely to be a primary consideration.

1. 32bit apps
   64bit Windows 7 runs 32bit code using the WOW64 (Windows-On-Windows) subsystem. This means that most of your current apps (almost certain to be 32bit) will just run on the 64bit platform. WOW64 translates 32bit calls via an intermediate layer to the 64bit kernel. In general users see nothing of this and apps continue to run as they did on 32bit systems. This is a very smart way of bridging these systems. The only real visible cues for users are in the %ProgramFiles% and %windir%\System32 locations. On 64 bit systems you will now have a "Program Files (x86)" and "%windir%\SysWOW64" folders for the 32bit apps. This change can have an impact for some poorly constructed apps which expect the previous path to exist but this should be a generally rare case.
    
2. 32bit Registry
   The registry also caters for a parallel system for 32bit apps, the: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node  is a visible sign of Windows registry redirection to cater for 32bit applications.  Windows redirects calls to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE to this sub-key so that the 32bit registry can be maintained in parallel with the 64bit. Additional keys under: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Classes follow the same re-direction.

1. Drivers
   This is one of the areas where its not generally possible to provide a translation layer (like WOW64) as drivers communicate too directly with the kernel. The result is that 32bit drivers fail on a 64bit platform. I've been pleasantly surprised, however, by the availability of compatible 64bit drivers for all of my peripherals (including a home inkjet printer) and as time moves on hardware vendors will continue to extended availability of drivers.

The net result has been a very compatible OS at both the application and 64bit compatibility levels and performance from the SSD has meant the common stuff like boot-up, shutdown, access to mail and general Office related tasks has been blisteringly fast. Vista used to just feel sluggish with so many wait states as indeterminate background tasks seemed to get in the way - all of that is gone away and as a user I'm back to being master of my machine (as opposed to the other way round).

Great write up from Network World here, as they revisit the organisations they singled out as ones to watch back in 2008.

Denise Dubie picks out highlights including our global framework agreements with both Microsoft and Citrix, read more here - http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/nsm/2009/121409nsm1.html?hpg1=bn

App-DNA presented the AppTitude product to Microsoft's technical teams at their internal technology showcase event - TechReady - earlier this year. Feedback from the event has now been released, and it's fantastic to see that the demo went down so well with the audience. See feedback from Chris Jackson, "The App Compat Guy", on his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/cjacks/archive/2009/12/08/techready-9-recap.aspx 

App-DNA has a global framework agreement with Microsoft for the use of AppTitude by Microsoft field and pre-sales teams, so it's great to see further evidence of very positive traction and that our product is delivering benefit for the Microsoft teams...

App-DNA is playing a key role in Microsoft's current Greenlight programme (http://www.app-dna.com/greenlight/greenlight.asp) a drive to assist ISVs in getting their applications compatible with Windows 7.

Through a simple process of uploading an app to our secure FTP site, we then test the apps compatibility on the new OS using our AppTitude product, we then provide the ISV with a green, amber or red result, and where necessary offer more detailed remediation advice to enable them to get their app ready.

We've already successfully tested a number of ISV apps and App-DNA Technical Solutions Consultant, Richard Edwards, will be on the blog shortly to discuss our overall findings so far.

In the meantime, use the link above to get your application tested!

The App-DNA team has just returned from a busy week in Berlin at the Microsoft Tech-Ed show. This was our first show under the System Center Alliance banner, and proved a great success, lots of interest and lots of Win7 migration leads. Also, proved very valuable in showing the value of the Effort Calculator - stand visitiors really understood the benefit this could bring them in illustrating clearly the time and cost invloved in migrating applications to the new OS.