Dear Microsoft App-V Folks:

If you were really serious about putting this gem of a product to widespread use, you would get busy doing the following:

1. Make the client free to download for all Windows 7 users

2. Make App-V available like Hyper-V currently is (licensing and cost)

3. Initiate a vendor partnership program to offer incentives to provide sequenced applications, maybe as part of a subscription "Fast-Track" advantage program.

4. Actually get behind the whole program instead just paying lip service.

Thank you!

Yours truly: Tired software packagers of the world

How Cool it *Can* Be

So, as a proof of concept, a few months ago I setup a lab with the following ingredients:

• A Windows Server 2008 AD domain controller
• A Windows Server 2008 App-V / File server
• A Windows 7 client
• App-V packages for Office 2007, Paint.NET, FireFox
• Group Policy Preferences: Drive Mappings, Desktop Shortcuts (to the server-based App-V shortcuts)

Net result:

Take a new computer, load it with Windows 7, join it to the domain.  Reboot it.  When the first user logs on they have all their drive mappings and shortcuts to the applications (the shortcuts appear as if they're already installed).  When they double-click a shortcut, the App-V client briefly says it's caching the package and then it launches like a normal installed application.  After that, it essentially *is* a normal installed application (after being cached once).

Almost zero-touch.

Add to this MDT and SCCM with OSD and you can absolutely have "zero-touch" deployments.  Yes Virginia: It is possible.

This is obviously a basic setup and wouldn't work in a business environment without some adjustments and tweaking.  But with Group Policy Preferences and Item Level Targeting, you can tailor policy settings to specific groups or computers with minimal effort.  It can also help to determine which applications should be in the layer "0" image (WIM+sequence), and which should be in layers "1" and higher, and let Group Policy and App-V handle those.  Keep in mind that applications which are managed by their own concurrent licensing service (think FlexLM and FlexNet Manager) can be deployed in layer "0" using a sequence and you can avoid pushing 10 Gb packages over the network (think Autodesk 3DS Max, Civil 3D or Inventor).

To me, this is where Microsoft shines, and they rarely get credit from mass media for how much they've accomplished at such a relatively low cost.  If we were still on IBM and DEC technology it would cost millions of dollars to do this.  Microsoft made it possible to do this for even the largest companies for basically chump change.

Dave's Lame Predictions: The Future of Windows Management

Ok, call me stupid or ignorant, but here goes...

Given the recent announcements and details surrounding Windows Azure, cloud services (.NET, SQL, etc.), the increased use of PKI for tying together internal and external assets within a homogenous management realm, heterogenious identity management, and the water-testing efforts of AIS, MDOP, Office Live Workspaces, Hosted Exchange services, and Live Mesh, I think we're going to see a gradual shift towards a two-sector approach to infrastructure or desktop "management": Host-Managed or Self-Managed.

Today we have a choice of the small business approach using System Center Essentials (SCE) or the larger enterprise collective of System Center products (Configuration Manager, Data Protection Manager, Operations Manager, etc.). Sort of paralleled with the aims of Small Business Server against Windows Server product lines. Basically: Bundled "Lite" or Separate "Full" versions.

For smaller businesses (those with less than 500 users is my guess) Microsoft may provide hosted "managed" services to replace the need for SCE inside a customer environment. The benefits are obvious and tangible: Reduced overhead costs, reduced labor costs, reduced downtime from diverted labor for troubleshooting (your admin person can continue working on other things instead of stopping to diagnose SCE problems). No dedicated servers or rack space. No increase to electrical or cooling costs. Just deploy an agent to your desktops and log into your web console to do your management work.

Quite a few consulting partners and service providers offer managed services to their customers. Even our local cable company (Cox) offers it now. Remote management and helpdesk support by VPN. For many customers this has worked out very well. Many more haven't been exposed to this yet or are stuck in their current investment and can't justify a change as drastic as this. So there's a market out there still to be tapped for this.

Obviously you could apply arguments against this concept, much like "cloud services" in general. Most hinge on availability or "uptime". But unless you're dealing with a small business operating in a nightmarish IT environment, the level of support won't be second-by-second. Probably not even hour by hour. For the crisis situation, maybe there could be a staged approach with an internal server acting as backup, who knows. That could be an added option.

The possibilities are there already. I'm sure Microsoft is already working on this, at least in a prototype or proof-of-concept mode. Here's how I would imagine it:

Small business customer has 250 employees with computers. Maybe a handful of dedicated physical servers, running SBS+Exchange, another File/Print, another line-of-business box, and maybe some others. Now you want to get a better handle on patching and health checkups and maybe controlling desktop settings and installing software. You could look at WSUS and SCE and trying to package with Wise and deploying with Group Policy (yuck!), or scale up (and more costly) to System Center Configuration Manager + WSUS. OR... You could sign up for (hypothetically now, don't freak out on me...) subscribe to a service by Microsoft that bundles Software Assurance (subscription upgrades) with MDOP and maybe a System Center Live Essentials service, and use App-V to package your apps and deploy them that way.

Just hypothetical of course. The current versions of these products would need some adjustments to fit into a small business environment, but it's entirely possible.

So you'd have to options: For enterprise customers, you'd still have the A La Carte choices, and for the smaller customers they could buy into the toaster-oven concept. A simple to implement and easy to administer service without the need to buy hardware or maintain the management app itself (ever spent hours troubleshooting SMS issues? not very fun). I have no inside information on any of this, so this is all speculation on my part alone. I could see it though.

Mystery of Mysteries Revealed: Software Assurance

I just returned from a week-long training session out in building 25 on the Microsoft campus, in Redmond, Washington. The course was all about the forthcoming Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, or "MDOP", product suite. It will be available only to customers who have purchased Software Assurance (or "SA") on their desktop computers. MDOP includes five (5) main products, all of which were acquired by Microsoft over the past two years.

• SoftGrid - Microsoft acquired the company Softricity in order to get their hands on their renown application virtualization technology. The current version (4.1 on server, 4.2 on clients) has only been slightly modified from before the acquisition. 4.5 is in beta and set for a release in Q3/08 under the new name of "Microsoft Application Virtualization" and will have some notable enhancements.
  ...
• Advanced Group Policy Management (AGPM) - Microsoft acquired this from the purchase of it's developer "Desktop Standard". Not much has been been enhanced or modified from before it was acquired by Microsoft.
  ...
• Diagnostics and Recovery Toolkit (DaRT) - Acquired along with the purchase of Sysinternals/Winternals, formerly called Winternals' ERD commander. It also includes parts of Sysinternals various utilities and some notable enhancements for Vista.
  ...
• Asset Inventory Services (AIS) - Acquired from Assetmetrix and bundled into Systems Management Server 2003 Service Pack 3, as well as making available within MDOP as "AIS" will be instead an entirely hosted solution.
  ...
• Desktop Error Monitoring (DEM) - Replaces the aging and defunct "Corporate Error Reporting" product for collecting, reporting and forwarding internally generated desktop errors, failures, faults, crashes, etc. DEM is instead built from a subset of System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) 2007.

But the most peculiar thing I found during this training course wasn't related to any of these technologies. All of which are very good in their own rite. But rather, it was when I asked about SA. I got the same response I get from every sales person, technical engineer, and account manager: "Well, it's sort of subscription with some other goodies, but I don't know exactly".

Say what?!

That's what gets me. The single most important, vital, profitable venture Microsoft has underway is obviously one of the most under-communicated, misunderstood, and poorly explained services they have.

Go ahead. I dare you. Ask anyone around you to list five things you get for purchasing SA on desktops. I've asked people from all kinds of environments, countries, companies, you name it. Most can rattle off two or three at most. I could only list three. Here's what I've managed to cull from various Microsoft and partner web sites...

• Vouchers for Training Courses
• Vouchers for Partner Consulting Services
• Vouchers for 24x7 Technical Support
• Allows Conversion of Vouchers (training to consulting, to support, vice versa)
• E-Learning Vouchers
• Employee Purchase Discounts
• Home Use Program
• MDOP for $10/client more (15% discount on Enterprise coverage):
• Operating System Upgrades (XP to Vista)

Damn! If I were to pass along what many of the sales managers have told me, I would have said "You get upgrades and some support and some other stuff". Wow. That would really sell it to someone. Not. Seems to me that Microsoft needs to (A) simplify what SA "is" and what it gets you, and (B) communicate and educate their partners to better understand it enough to sell it effectively. Holy shit! That sounds like common sense sales and marketing to me.

Selling Software Assurance based on two or three of these key features would be abysmal. I wouldn't want to earn commission upon that horrible thought. I'd starve to death. As soon as you mention "upgrades" as a feature benefit, most customers will immediately shove you out the door and slam it behind you. All the while laughing hysterically. In my (humblest) opinion, Microsoft needs to bundle more than MDOP into SA to make it really attractive. Even as nice as MDOP is (and it is very nice), it's not going to sell itself.

Microsoft's partners will be putting in a lot of face time to get these points across, and hope, fingers' crossed, that customers are receptive and willing to stroke the check. It's a tough sell even so. I realize that much of the reason they have to tread lightly is due to their dealings with DOJ and the EU and their penchant for biting at Microsoft's ankles when they try to knock on doors.

I'm a Systems Engineer and I feel like I know it better than the people who are supposed to be selling to customers.