Organizations today are in various stages of rolling out Windows 7, but no matter which stage they're in App-DNA™ technical resources often hear the same kinds of questions. You would expect questions like: Will my applications work when running on Windows 7? If there are application compatibility issues, can it be fixed and how do I implement that fix?

AppTitude solves these problems by providing application owners with detailed compatibility information about an application in just minutes. This core value alone accelerates Windows 7 deployments, reduces costs and eliminates risk by shining a light on the internals of every single application in an enterprise portfolio -- without having to manually test each and every one of the applications. This blog post isn't necessarily about manual testing for Windows 7 versus static analysis, but if you want to learn more about how AppTitude answers those questions, click here.

When working with App-DNA customers implementing the AppTitude application compatibility platform, another question that always bubbles up is *should* I fix an application or is it more cost-effective to replace or retire it? Whenever I get asked this question, the answer is always the same: “It depends.” This is a business decision that involves several parameters:

• What is the value of the application to the organization?
• Is the application expected to have a long remaining lifespan?
• Can the defects in the application even be fixed?
• For commercial applications, does the vendor have a Windows 7 compatible version?
• How much does it cost to upgrade to that compatible version and how does that cost compare to the cost of remediating and testing the existing version of your application?

AppTitude provides application intelligence to drive these business decisions. Generating this application intelligence manually without AppTitude would be a tedious, manual process that would require enterprise IT organizations to essentially incur the costs of trying to remediate a problem application in order to even determine if remediation is a cost effective solution. In basic terms, fix something to determine if you even want to keep it.  The reporting architecture in AppTitude provides intelligence to make these decisions at your fingertips. The most important reports for driving these decisions are AppTitude Action reports. AppTitude action reports give targeted information about which applications have defects, what those defects are, how they can be remediated, and the cost of implementing those remediations.  This information is invaluable in making a decision to remediate, upgrade, redevelop, mitigate or retire an application.

 Below is a very basic flow to highlight the kinds of decisions you have to make and where Application Intelligence is necessary to drive those decisions. The blue shapes are processes, decisions and data points driven entirely by AppTitude Application Intelligence. The  orange shapes represent decisions factoring in business specific data with Application Intelligence.  The green shapes represent processes that are optimized and streamlined.

The success of an application compatibility project is not measured just on moving the organization to Windows 7, but also in doing so in a cost effective and timely way.   Application Intelligence drives these cost decisions earlier in the project lifecycle where they can make a difference. AppTitude generates this Application Intelligence in just minutes per application.

Enterprises are off and running with Windows 7, App-V, XenApp and optimized desktop projects. The challenge comes in determining what applications to migrate, managing applications, application testing and application compatibility. Next week’s Microsoft World Partner Conference has an amazing track educating Microsoft partners on how to best help enterprises accelerate their move to Windows 7, as well as Internet Explorer 8, App-V and all of the related technologies.

What if Microsoft partners were given the opportunity to partner with App-DNA and, for no cost, access the award winning AppTitude™ application testing and application remediation platform to deliver to Proof of Concepts (POC)? What if it only took three days to assess application remediation issues?

App-DNA has a fantastic program that already exists today, called Launchpad and will provide a crystal clear view of an enterprise’s application estate.  This in turn will help systems integrators and service providers deliver the business case to move more quickly to the optimized desktop.  Partners will find more successful projects by gaining a truer understanding of what the enterprise application estate looks like, and better assessing the level of effort needed to properly give an accurate bid for the project. Customers and partners are more satisfied from a clear view of the project, an accurate price quote and a realistic timeline based on facts rather than “gut feel.”

App-DNA Launchpad is a quick-start application compatibility discovery program that brings together four high-value components:

EstateView™ - provides an instant portfolio readiness report on up to 1000 apps

EffortCalculator™ - details project scope and scale by using real metrics to calculate costs, duration and resource needs

CoreSample™ - assessment reports on 50 apps with full reports on 10 selected MSI apps with a deep ‘drill down’ on over 68,000 data points per app in 11 areas

What it means for Microsoft partner’s customers:

See exactly how ready a customer’s app estate is to migrate

Calculate what the migration proposal will cost and how long it will take

Guide resourcing decisions

Build an informed migration strategy – meet more deadlines

Interested in learning more about App-DNA Launchpad for Microsoft partners?  Drop us a line at info@app-dna.com to set up a time to talk at WPC next week or after the conference.

In previous OS migrations, the process for determining application compatibility was a manual one.  Applications were tested and if found to have errors, put through a further testing and remediation process.  This was a costly, risky, disruptive, time-consuming and ultimately a very expensive process, leading many organizations to subsequently skip OS upgrades (or delay as long as possible) due to the cost and pain of the experience.

With Windows 7 migration and the new testing tools available, the situation has improved considerably.  The opportunity to pre-scan applications before testing or remediation can make the whole process significantly more efficient.  Knowing which applications have issues before testing means expert resources can be applied directly to applications that need them – and only those.  Applications which do not have issues can be fast-tracked through light or user testing according to importance.  Time and resource planning can be based on accurate metrics rather than basic estimation, reducing the overall time to implementation.

If the process of testing and remediation is begun based on knowledge about the applications and their issues, the entire process becomes more manageable.  High volumes of applications can be addressed with fewer resources.  Timetables are compressed and output is more stable and thus the entire process becomes less risky for the business.

Discovering that an application has issues takes a lot less time than identifying and resolving those issues.  Finding issues with an application (which may require weeks or months to resolve) late in a project can jeopardize the whole project.  Therefore, early identification of issues and their causes saves more than just time.  Automation of application analysis is typically more accurate than basic compatibility testing, as all files within the application can be touched and analyzed with the same degree of depth.  This is not easily achieved whenever a user is required to interact with the application to perform the assessment.

Remediation can come in various forms, from modifications to the installer, shims, re-development, re-provisioning or modifications to the OS build.  Knowledge of the issue types makes resolution more direct.  The ability to incorporate application remediation via modifications to the OS build means that whole categories of issues, for example, missing or deprecated components, can be resolved without modification to individual applications.  This level of resolution further increases stability and efficiency, but may require collaboration between application teams and OS build teams who may have previously worked in isolation.

Organizations that implement and maintain application management processes, often put in place during migrations, benefit in the long term by being more agile.  Agility, in this sense, means being able to adapt to OS and technology changes more rapidly with less risk, less disruption and reduced cost.

Having an up-to-date view of applications means the portfolio size can be pruned and rationalized on an ongoing basis.  Packaging of applications allows for rapid analysis and modifications.  Virtualization can further increase stability and reduce testing as part of the ongoing application management cycle.