Application Readiness

Integrating Application Virtualization into your Existing Application Packaging Process

by Randy Littleson

According to Gartner, application virtualization is an application packaging and deployment technology that isolates applications from each other and limits the degree to which they interact with the underlying OS. Application virtualization provides an alternative to traditional packaging and installation technologies. 

Application virtualization has the potential to decrease the time it takes to deploy applications by reducing application packaging complexity and scope for application conflicts typically experienced when using traditional packaging approaches (e.g., MSI). Cost savings comprise the main benefit of application virtualization in the form of faster application packaging, less regression testing, reduced help desk calls and increased standardization.

 Given that application virtualization represents an alternative approach to application packaging and deployment, it stands to reason that you would benefit from integrating this into your existing application packaging process. Specifically, such a process should include steps to: 

 

• Identify—the first step requires obtaining an accurate view of the applications that are deployed across the organization. This is a good time to look at the application inventory and take stock of what is actually being used, as opposed to what is deployed. When organizations undertake a major migration like Windows 7 or 8 - every app they port to that new environment requires time and effort - and therefore costs the company. Likewise, the same applies to application virtualization.  Reducing the number of applications that must be migrated, and the cost per migrated application is an important goal. So, companies are wise to inventory their applications and understand their use.

 

• Rationalize—once inventory is complete, IT should verify the need to continue to support the applications or to consolidate applications to a reduced number of products and versions, excluding from the migration process those that are not used. This will not only save time and cost around the migration, but it will enable the company to reduce wasted IT spend on application licenses that are not being used.

 

• Assess Compatibility—an essential step in any migration is an assessment of application suitability, as not all applications owned will work in the desired new environment. Without automation, it’s difficult to quickly know which applications will have compatibility issues, and thus which will require additional time to migrate.  If you’re virtualizing applications and considering rolling out Windows 7 or 8 applications as part of a larger VDI initiative, compatibility assessment must extend past simple application compatibility. It must also include an assessment of end user-compatibility. IT must have a high level of confidence that the user will have a good experience with the virtualized Windows app in the new operating system; otherwise the virtualized deployment will fail. To do so, organizations must collect in-depth information on each user’s application usage such as CPU performance, online/offline access, input/output and memory utilization, to reveal virtualization suitability and the complexity of virtualizing that application. From there, IT should generate a suitability assessment, ranking devices and users based on virtualization suitability into low-, medium- and high-complexity groups based on usage patterns and environmental conditions. Only those users assessed to have a high level of suitability should be deployed on the virtualized Windows 7 or 8 applications.

 

• Plan - the work completed in the Rationalize and Assess Compatibility phases arms IT management with a list of rationalized applications and the details of compatibility issues that need to be addressed. With this information IT will have a clear view of the magnitude of the project enabling them to accurately calculate costs and duration timeframes.

 

• Fix and package - as organizations prepare to deploy in the new environments they will need to convert applications to the required format. Application fixing and format conversion can be a time-consuming, manual process, so utilizing technology to automate this and leverage investment in packaged applications can yield considerable savings, and ensure a consistent approach to Application Readiness.

 

• Deploy - now IT can hand off the packaged virtualized applications to the deployment system for delivery to end users. To further cut costs, create efficiencies and deliver a better user experience, more organizations are looking to create App Portals for self-service - giving users an iTunes-like enterprise App Store to access approved applications. If the App Portal is linked to an Application Readiness solution, the process for populating the storefront with packaged applications, and making them available to users with requisite access rights can be simple. Moreover, if the App Portal is tied on the back end to an Enterprise License Optimization system, IT can create a seamless App Store experience for end users while still maintaining continual software compliance, financial accountability and control.

Note that this is the same process used to support traditional MSI applications.  While application virtualization introduces a new way to package and deploy, there are significant synergies to be realized—ease of training, process consistency, accuracy of results, etc.—from putting all applications through a standard application readiness process, regardless of the end format into which they will be packaged. Process consistency ensures that every application goes through the same rigor and steps to prepare it for successful deployment.

What continues to impede widespread adoption is that application virtualization cannot be used for 100% of applications, and may never work with many legacy applications, especially those developed in-house. The key is figuring out which ones can and can’t be virtualized. This reality places a premium on a standardized process that assesses each application for suitability to be virtualized and then implements an appropriate packaging strategy based on that assessment.

Application virtualization is not a panacea. But, with the right application readiness process supported by the right tools, organizations can leverage application virtualization to efficiently deliver applications and reduce help desk calls.

 For additional information, read the white paper “Six Steps to Continuous Application Readiness.”

Symantec Vision 2012 – The Information-Driven World is Rapidly Changing

by Toby Martin

Having just returned from the Symantec Vision Show in Las Vegas, I wanted to share some commentary that I gathered while at the event. As the threat landscape evolves and end-users are rapidly adopting new technologies, Vision 2012 provided some insights about where things are headed:

 

• The partnership between Symantec and VMware was spoken of often, and fondly, by the Symantec team, their partners, and end users who are intrigued to see where this is going. Reaching into the Hypervisor from within the Symantec Suite definitely opens up many possibilities and should make this very interesting to watch as it evolves.

 

• According to Forrester, expect 200 Million mobile devices in corporate environments by 2016, and the growth will be even faster in the amount of data housed. Cross-platform support has won over most of the major players and is especially strong for iOS. Several apps and versions coming this year are supporting iOS first, before Android or Windows mobile. Of the multiple demos I got to see − mostly on Apple devices − I found the separation of application access from data the most interesting. This is being done with forced authentication and inter-application security policies blocking sharing of data amongst un-secured devices. 

 

•  Another common theme was persistent vs. non-persistent environments, and all that they entail. It appears that demand for persistent environments is increasing as a result of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD). The Generation X & Y users don’t even look for security policies, they just bring in their devices and hook them up, so you’d best secure the data because it’s already too late to secure the devices.

 

•  The ‘Cloud’ was pervasive with many thought leadership and cloud sessions positing that in 2-3 years there won’t be sessions on the cloud, but instead it will be everywhere in nearly all the sessions. The mindset is changing from ‘security and compliance tools FROM the cloud, to security and compliance tools FOR the cloud.’ Much of the discussion about the cloud centered on the emerging threat landscape and the fact that attacks done with applications are not only targeting enterprise or government. As a result, endpoint protection on virtual desktops is increasing in importance to abate the ever-growing risk.

 

•  Symantec recognized that they have several portals and they committed to working on unifying them, which is good news for users. While they do provide a means of interacting through APIs and the like, it is still incumbent upon the end user to get this to work. Some developments are:

-   Nukona acquisition (2Q11) will be moving in the direction of single-sign on for application access

-   Regardless of the device on which the user logs in, persistent security settings will follow, thereby achieving the dream of managing BYOD from anywhere, anytime

 

So to sum up, the pervasiveness of the cloud and associated services required to secure delivery via the cloud and via mobile devices was top of mind and topic and is the direction we will see Symantec continue to invest.

New Application Metadata – Enhancing App Management

by Steve Schmidt

As applications have been prepared for deployment in organizations, there has often been value in adding externally generated data to the package to aid in the use and management of the application.  Some of these data elements have been associated with technical components, such as a list of file dependencies.  Others have been more administrative, such as the target department, date of preparation, identification of the packager and/or tester, contact information of the support staff, etc.

Additional types of metadata appear to be increasing in interest and value.  A selection of recent examples includes:

 

• Deployment preferences – At the Microsoft Management Summit in April, Bill Anderson’s “state of the union” on System Center 2012 Configuration Manager included a discussion of the new Application Model. This model includes information about the best available application delivery option for various user groups, and can be leveraged by System Center at time of application deployment. 

 

• User settings – Microsoft’s announcement of User Experience Virtualization (UE-V) is one of the most recent examples of a way to include user-specific application profile setting to an application.  The data is stored in an XML file that accompanies the application, and provides users with a common application experience even when they login across different devices. 

 

• Financial and Licensing information – In enterprise app stores, which are becoming increasingly popular, data about the cost of the application is often presented to interested users in order to help them understand the budgetary impact to the organization.  Likewise, the number of licenses available can be included, and used to conditionally allocate new instances of the application and/or trigger approval or procurement processes.

 

• Identification tags – Even the basic idea of self-identification of the application is evolving.  The ISO- 19770 standard defines a way to identify applications using XML data included with the application package.  This promises to help organizations quickly and accurately identify applications, enhancing support and compliance initiatives. Microsoft has recently announced additional support for this standard. 

 

All of these data elements are intended to make the application set more manageable within the enterprise.  To make the best use of such data, guidelines should be set within the organization about when and how it is applied.  To facilitate consistency and to streamline the process, templates can be built and applied via tools that automate the application readiness process.

 

Reference Links:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh925141.aspx

Microsoft tag support announced