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.

Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) 2010 is next week! The App-DNA™ technical team is eagerly anticipating conversations about your application compatibility and application remediation challenges, successes and questions. MMS is always a great venue to learn more about System Center, Windows 7, App-V, MED-V and what’s next from Microsoft. We enjoy catching up with old friends and making new friends – stop by and see App-DNA at Expo Booth #437 or chat with the orange-shirted App-DNA team at these MMS sessions.

Monday, Apr 19

Windows 7 - Gaining More Control Over Windows Installer Packaging Infrastructure – We’ve found organizations that follow MSI best practices have higher application compatibility ratios when testing their application estate for Windows 7.  Darwin Sanoy knows MSI inside and out -- check out his CSI:\>Windows blog

Tuesday, Apr 20

Considerations for deploying and managing applications in the cloud – Managing change is a key priority for IT teams. Well managed environments have faster deployments to new technologies – less time spent fixing problems that may slow down your adoption of cool new technologies like the cloud.  

Beyond Service Manager - Partner Solutions – as a System Center Alliance partner, App-DNA is always interested in what System Center peer partners are developing…

Virtualization - Ask the Panel of Experts – App-DNA helps enterprises with application virtualization compatibility, accelerating App-V implementations. We learn from your comments on the MDOP team blogs and we’re keen to hear the live questions of MMS attendees.

Ask the Panel of Community Experts -  Most panels include 4-5 experts, but this one includes a huge lineup of top contributors to the MyITForum message boards, plus industry leaders, and your really interesting questions.

Wednesday, Apr 21

App-V: Top 10 Most Common Customer Scenarios and End to End Review – If you’re not yet adopting App-V, find out how you can. Angie Anderson & Bill Morein have such in-depth knowledge – bound to be a great session. 

Thursday, Apr 22

Unblocking and Accelerating your Windows 7 Deployment Using MED-V – App-DNA works closely with Windows 7 app compat every day, we’re interested in helping accelerate your Windows 7 deployment.

Configuration Manager v.Next - Ask the Panel of Experts – The best part of MMS is sometimes going back to work on Monday with all of the information that you learned about v.Next- you’re the star at the coffee maker with all your new knowledge. Jeff Wettlaufer is still taking questions for this session - Twitter them to #mmsea01  

Friday, Apr 23

Sequencing Deep Dive: Efficiently Making your Applications Virtual – As App-DNA works with customers implementing App-V, the most popular questions are “what should I virtualize” and “how do I fix it if it won’t virtualize?”  

Also, don’t forget the keynotes, end of day Speaker Q&A sessions, Birds of a Feather, plus the amazing Hands on Labs! In all your scheduling, be sure to book time to stop by the App-DNA Expo Booth #437 to see AppTitude™ in action. Want to set a specific time with App-DNA? Contact info@app-dna.com

What sessions are you most interested in seeing? Share your favorites in the comments.  

Based on a slew of positive reviews of its beta releases, Windows 7 is already attracting more attention – certainly more positive attention -- than Windows Vista ever did.  But will Win 7 be the OS that Microsoft had intended Vista to be?  Whether it’s Vista or Win 7 or whatever comes next, changing an organization’s OS always has a major impact on the bottom line.  Every person using a Windows computer is affected. Yet the challenge for IT is to refresh the OS with little or no business disruption.  And IT also has to justify the level of effort and cost to the business.  This can be a tough sell when things may appear to be fine as is.

The much vaunted “business value” proposition for operating systems has become a target of critics.  An OS is ultimately a platform on which to run applications.  It’s the applications that manage the business and they are the reason the significant license investments are made.  The right OS should run applications quickly and efficiently, providing a smooth experience for users.  On this basis alone, the business case for an OS upgrade becomes difficult.  A business just wants its applications to work, period.  Going through a disruptive, expensive change to a new OS for a marginal gain just doesn’t seem worth the hassle.

This time around, organizations thinking about a Win 7 upgrade have an advantage, some new technologies and solutions that support and automate what has traditionally been a protracted, risky and very expensive process. For most of us, the preparation, planning, rationalization and assessment for adopting a new OS remain the same.  But there are emerging technologies to help get the applications onto the new OS AND facilitate better ongoing management, agility and stability for the application portfolio.

So there are some key arguments in favor of the business case for a move to Win 7.  With the right tools, you can reduce the cost, risk and business disruption of migration, increase application stability and reduce the cost of ongoing IT management.  In upcoming posts, I’ll offer my thoughts on various aspects of the OS upgrade challenge, including some tips that might reduce your pain if you’ve decided to move to Win 7.  I hope you’ll share your thoughts here as well, or let me know if there’s a particular OS upgrade challenge you’re facing.

Paul Schnell