Unlock app compat and you unlock your desktop migration

Application complexity is the number one issue on any Windows 7 migration project. We regularly see that anywhere between 20%-35% of installed applications may be incompatible with Windows 7. With application sprawl more evident than ever, that percentage can equate to a large number of applications that may need to be remediated as part of the migration project. Large numbers of applications needing to be remediated equals lengthy, time-consuming and costly desktop migrations.

The key word in that figure of 20%-35% of applications being incompatible is installed. You might already know how many applications are installed across your end-user estate, but do you know what applications are regularly used, sometimes used or never used? This information will impact massively the steps you take in your application compatibility process.

At Centrix Software, we regularly find, across all of the customers that we work with, that 50% of all installed applications are simply not used. Yes – 50%! That has many different implications and we’ll cover those at a separate time J For now, let’s keep the focus on what that means for application compatibility. The worst case is that the number of applications needing remediation is halved. That’s worst case. The reality is that many of the unused applications are the older applications, and it’s the older applications that are more likely to have compatibility issues. Therefore, we see the remediation requirements drop dramatically when you fully understand application usage, by as much as 95% with some customers!

Instead of having to remediate 187 applications based on what was installed, a local UK government needed to remediate just 9 based on what was used. Even more startling, of 525 incompatible installed applications, a retailer needed to remediate just 14 based on what was actually used!

So to unlock your desktop migrations, unlock your application compatibility and know what’s used. You’ll be amazed at just what a difference that can make!