Application Migration – More Technology

Anyone who has done any form of desktop refresh or upgrade will know that the biggest issue is getting the applications from one side of the refresh in working order to the other side. Despite the amount of press coverage that a new operating system gets, most people use an operating system to run applications. The volume of applications used by businesses has always amazed me.

There are many techniques that assist with this challenge. The main one I have seen employed has been application re-packaging. On the basis that most applications get deployed more than once they are re-packaged so that the same application package with the corporate configuration can be deployed quickly to anyone who needs the application. The problem with this – it’s expensive and time consuming, but more significantly it gives every user the ‘corporate’ configuration of the application. Most users then proceed to spend even more time tuning the application to their working process. This reduction in productivity is a major impact to anyone receiving a refreshed or upgraded device.

The other approach that some organisations follow is to make the end-user responsible for the applications that they use, some even make them responsible for the configuration of the client device and when to refresh it. The application re-packaging approach doesn’t work in these environments the approach needs to be client based.

Yesterday Microsoft announced the purchase of Apptimum (beta news) focussed on moving applications, settings and data between devices.

The killer application in this arena will be the one that blends both solutions, allowing enterprises to build easily deployed packages and also to enable users to move their state with them. There isn’t enough information available to position the Apptimum technology but I would expect it to come into the Microsoft toolset along side the next version of the User State Migration Tool.

We still have a long, long way to go before we make the business of upgrades a pleasurable experience for people.

(Sorry, I’m all out of Jimmy and Grandad pictures at the moment so please enjoy the snow in Bulgaria as a substitute for now)