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.

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.  

Not our top 3 considerations when moving to Windows 7, but those of Mike Silver, Gartner’s Vice-President and Research Director. See his insights into the Windows 7 migration and application compatibility challenges in two short videos. 

These incisive interviews distill Michael’s wealth of knowledge and experience into a wide-ranging set of predictions, observations, and tips, along with input from App-DNA's own Mike Welling. With proper planning and processes, migrating your apps to Windows 7 should be pain free. Watch the experts - http://www.app-dna.com/news/gartner-on-windows-7.asp 

The effort needed to migrate to Windows 7 and other platforms just got clearer! App-DNA™ has launched the Effort Calculator as part of it's AppTitude product. The Effort Calculator uses raw data sepcific to your organisation, generated by AppTitude, to show you the exact time and cost needed to get your apps migrated. Have a look at the demo here www.app-dna.com/effortcalculator

An OS is a complex software foundation, and Windows 7 is no exception.  It’s responsible not only for delivering applications, but also for managing and securing an organization’s data and systems.  The configuration of the OS requires a variety of decisions relating to the inclusion of core applications, group policy objects, file and registry permissions and other settings.

In addition to the ‘base image’ configuration, additional consideration is required for the provision of hardware specific drivers and add-ons.  Windows Vista introduced a modular build system to address the long-standing objective of IT administrators to maintain a single OS image for multiple hardware types that can be modified at deployment time to include specific drivers.

A number of application compatibility issues also may be mitigated by including deprecated components or modifying default settings within the OS configuration.  When planning a Windows 7 migration, it’s helpful to gain an understanding of how many applications in the portfolio have, for example, interactive services, legacy help files or dependencies on legacy language runtimes.  This can allow compatibility remediation to be bundled into the OS build process rather than on a time-consuming, per-application basis.

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