With the best will in the world, if you’re responsible for an enterprise portfolio, some of your applications won’t work on Windows 7. Simply put, Microsoft have deprecated certain aspects of its older OS’s for security and functionality reasons. The removal of such components obviously means that any application using them, will fail when deployed to Windows 7. So what can you do?

Microsoft will tell you in the first instance, that you should upgrade…and they’re right. This is by far the most reliable method for delivering the same business functionality through your new platform. However, this is often costly in terms of time and money, but it is worth looking in to, as a free, low impact upgrade may be available for your business to leverage.

If you can’t go down the upgrade route where do you go? First and foremost, this should not be viewed as a road block to adoption, as you do have options. These options are broadly split in to three:

1. Provide the application through a hosted Citrix platform.

3. Provide the application on a kiosk PC.

Enterprises have been using Citrix to deliver applications they don’t want on the desktop for years, very successfully. This solution can often also work for delivering applications that can no-longer be delivered to the desktop. For example, if you are moving from XP to Windows 7 and you’ve an app that won’t work on Windows 7, delivering it through a Citrix platform installed on Windows Server 2003, will facilitate to delivery of the business function, without having to “work around” the inherent incompatibilities of the desktop Windows 7 build.

It is of course possible that you will have to silo an existing farm to deliver this functionality, which needless to say has an implied cost; but balance that against the cost of upgrading the software, or supporting multiple OS builds and you may be surprised with the results.

Alternatively you could look at supplying the application as-is, but virtually. A couple of solutions spring to mind, MED-V and VDI. MED-V is Microsoft’s locally deployed virtual solution for delivering your legacy OS, with apps installed, to your new production Windows 7 platform. This take the form of a cut-down version of your existing XP build, created virtually and deployed to your Windows 7 desktop. The application is then launched within this virtual build and presented to the Windows 7 interface. Recent experience has shown that this solution can be successfully leveraged to deliver point solutions, however global wide scale usage is rare.

VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) on the other hand has been proven in many enterprises as a global solution for delivering centrally managed OS builds (and therefore applications) to the common or garden business user. Typically this solution is leveraged to keep management of the desktop platform in the data centre where the relevant expertise exists, however the type or revision of Windows delivered is not limited to newer versions and could be configured to deliver a legacy build to facilitate the operation of older applications.

Finally and by exception, kiosk PC’s can be used to provide the required business functionality to a limited number of users in the same geographical location. This solution is not as elegant as the other two and will require different management processes to be put in place. However if neither of the other solutions are practical in your enterprise, and the incompatible application has a limited user base, it is worth considering.

These options are of course fall back solutions for when an application tests as incompatible with the target platform, which it should be noted is normally a tiny percentage of any given portfolio. With the vast majority of applications, potential compatibility issues will exist, but they can be resolved. The next blog will look at the more common scenarios for resolving application incompatibilities; “What approach should I take to potential incompatibilities?”