Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualisation transforms applications into virtualized, network-available services resulting in dynamic delivery of software that is never installed, never conflicts, and minimizes costly application compatibility testing. Users and their application environments are no longer machine-specific, and the machines themselves are no longer user-specific, enabling IT to be flexible and responsive to business needs, and significantly reducing the cost of PC management, including application and operating system (OS) migrations.

Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualisation is an integral tool in the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for Software Assurance solution, a dynamic desktop solution available to Software Assurance customers that helps reduce application deployment costs, enable delivery of applications as services, and better manage and control enterprise desktop environments.

Challenges with today’s corporate desktop: Rigid, costly, and Unreliable
Today’s business desktop is awash in applications. Each installed application requires lengthy regression testing and deployment processes before it reaches production. Because applications are only available where they are installed, users are tied to their computers. All this makes complex yet critical business projects such as OS and application migrations, security refreshes, and disaster recovery plans even harder to complete.

Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualisation changes that. Instead of a complex series of time-consuming steps that consume resources, it helps transform desktop administration into a simpler, automated process for deploying, patching, updating, and terminating applications, that requires minimal resources and delivers superior results.

• Minimise application conflicts and regression testing - By eliminating the requirement to install applications on desktops or terminal servers, and shielding the OS and applications from changes normally created when applications are installed and run, Microsoft SoftGrid Application Virtualization prevents problems that hinder deployments. This also minimizes the need to perform lengthy regression testing.
• Simplify OS migrations and patching - Turn time-consuming, tedious migration and patching projects into largely automated, conflict-free processes. Most applications do not have to be repackaged for OS migrations and this eliminates regression testing.
• Build business continuity for applications - Replicate your virtualized applications like any other enterprise data to maintain an instant-on failover plan for your applications,significantly cutting end-user downtime. If you configure SoftGrid Application Virtualization user profiles to persist on the network, all user-specific application preferences can also easily be replicated to a back-up site.
• Secure desktops - Not only are application permissions centralized, but the applications and licenses that run on laptops are protected from unauthorized use. Applications can be locked down in read-only mode so that they can’t be altered or used in unauthorized ways. In addition, application isolation keeps the OS pristine, helping prevent and contain security breaches and infections.
  

RESOURCES

Case studies
 Alamance Medical Centre saves over $1.5 Million in application management costsover a 3 year period.
 Voca Virtualised 300 applications and cut deployment time from days to minutes.
 Dundee City Council now saves more than £145 000 every year on IT support, replacement costs and license reduction.

Data Sheets
 Click here to download Overview of SoftGrid Technology.

Other Links
Click here to find out more about Software Assurance Benefits.
Click here for more information on Desktop Optimisation Pack for Software Assurance.