“It’s all about the apps!” goes a popular IT battlecry. From the perspective of the users whose work we are all supporting it’s true. It is all about the applications they use to be productive.

Recognizing this, Dell and its new Quest division recently released a white paper entitled “Taking a New Approach to Application Compatibility in Windows 7 Migrations,” which focuses on ensuring application compatibility during upgrades of desktop operating systems.

The paper examines Virtualized Desktops as an effective strategy for testing, managing and maintaining application compatibility through upgrades to the desktop operating system, referring to them as “one of the most promising shifts for IT organizations struggling with years of desktop and application sprawl, coupled with ever-tightening budgets and leaner staffs.”

This value increases as these companies wrestle with how to accommodate the variety of devices that employees wish to bring and connect to the network.  BYOD creates multiple challenges in balancing the facility users want with the security that companies need.  Virtual desktops are a highly effective way of “insulating” the network and the user’s device from the application and the data, creating a highly secure user environment.

The paper then goes through a brief discussion about the many values of desktop virtualization, including reduced management and support costs achieved through centralization of application delivery, as well as the ability to extend the life of older client devices while still providing a fully-up-to-date current user experience.  This ability to extend the useful life of hardware is an important contributor to the virtualized desktop value proposition.

How Many Applications?

The paper cites a startling statistic from Forrester that the average large enterprise has to support more than 1,300 applications, not counting the rogue applications users install themselves.  After an examination of the issues surrounding browser-delivered and locally delivered applications, the white paper addresses the tools that are available to automatically assess and remediate applications that are not immediately transferrable to a Windows 7 environment.