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Flexera Software Delivers Continual Application Readiness While Slashing Management Costs

By Ashok Bindra, TMCnet Contributor

Application usage solutions management provider Flexera Software recently released Application Readiness solution AdminStudio suite 10 to enable organizations of all sizes to strategically manage application packaging and remediation across their entire software estate -- thus mitigating Windows 7 and application virtualization migration risks.

"The evolution -- from application packaging as a means to better manage costs in a static technology world, to application management as a means to better manage quality and compatibility in a dynamic technology world - is a game changer" said Chris Jackson, a principal consultant at Microsoft (News - Alert), in a statement. He added, "It allows organizations to see beyond their current state and regain their technology agility."

With as many as 35 percent of an enterprise's applications requiring updates in any given year, coupled with the explosive growth in Windows 7 migrations and virtualization initiatives, compatibility assessment, remediation and packaging processes are now of strategic importance to IT organizations. AdminStudio delivers application packaging efficiencies as much as nine times greater compared to manual efforts, said Flexera.

In short, AdminStudio suite 10 now lets users centrally manage and report on the virtual and traditional application portfolio for an overall view of the application estate's readiness for each format. Plus, a new, unified "application-centric" application catalog manages all deployment types for an application, enabling all packages, including virtual packages, to be handled with the same process and tools as those used for MSIs, eliminating the cost and complexity of having multiple solutions and repositories.

Moreover, it is now powered by the latest version of MSI (News - Alert) authoring and editing tool, InstallShield 2011, giving users complete flexibility in editing packages using the same installation preparation tool relied on by more than 71,000 ISVs worldwide.

"Most organizations do not have adequate visibility into their application portfolio to reliably understand the time, cost and resources required to successfully migrate their applications," said Maureen Polte, senior director of product management at Flexera Software. "AdminStudio 10 delivers continual readiness via a repeatable, reliable process to prepare and package MSI and virtual applications for Windows 7 migrations or day-to-day upgrades, drastically reducing the cost, labor and risk associated with application migrations," noted Polte.

Also, AdminStudio Application Compatibility Pack automatically assesses all applications to accurately calculate the effort and cost of the migration project. It is designed to pinpoint and fix application compatibility issues for desktop, server and web-based applications. As a result, packagers can test applications in minutes instead of weeks and obtain an overall view of the compatibility of all applications, including which ones require fixing for deployment on Windows 7 or Internet Explorer 8, said Flexera.