Windows10 - Are you migrating Desktop Progressive WebApps?

July 2009 Microsoft delivered Windows 7 to the world, just another operating system, right? Well kind of but XP had been in place for such a long time there was huge uncertainty on what this meant for organisations across the globe. It reminded me very much of the Y2K / Millennium Bug conundrum that faced everyone at the end of the last decade, it was something that wasn't going to be simple and was going to take a lot of time and investment to complete. 

Of course, there was the obvious questions that had to be answered.  Are my applications compatible with Windows 7? Do I need to replace my Hardware? There was a number of other questions which were unknown to many and if you don’t know the questions there won’t be any answers. Everyone was focused on one date, 8th April 2014, this was the date that Microsoft would end official support for XP and you guessed it with this date came scare mongering, everyone was going to be vulnerable to security threats, Microsoft would charge huge sums if you wanted to maintain support but this was all hearsay and there was no evidence to support these rumours. 

Windows 7 for most organisations was the biggest transformation of the users workspace since the introduction of the PC and I was luckily enough to be heavily involved in this industry during this time and I had the pleasure of working with a number of organisations as they worked through the challenges and problems and delivered amazing results. 

One of the unknown questions that came up was ‘how did an organisation migrate the user from XP to Windows 7’? With Windows 7 Microsoft had evolved the user’s profile which meant you couldn’t simply migrate the user and all their settings. Also, with Windows 7, organisations were also implementing a multi-platform desktop environment which meant users could have the ability to access their workspace from a physical device and on a virtual platform. Introducing a problem, how do we manage the user experience for the migration and when they move across different platforms. Do we simply wipe everything and ask them to start again? Should their experience be seamless across different platform’s / operating systems? It was something that was truly personal to the IT department and the organisation. 

This unknown lead to the rise of the UEM (User Experience Management) or UPM (User Profile Management) market where we saw AppSense, RES, Liquidware, RTO, Microsoft UE-V, Citrix UPM to mention a few. In a short space of time it was evident that the issue needed addressing and the technologies mentioned were being deployed across the globe as part of many Windows 7 migration projects and people recognised that you need to manage the users experience (profile) in a new way. You could say that these technologies following a number of acquisitions are now more commoditised and recognised across the industry. 

Fast forward to 2019 and everyone is talking about Cloud and Windows10. New technologies and concepts, but yet there are a large number of unknowns that organisations face as they migrate to cloud applications / platforms and Windows 10. But what we can’t forget about is the importance of the users experience as we embark on the modern-day IT transformations. Yes, you may have a UPM or UEM technology in place and that is great but how are you managing the users experience for their Desktop Progressive WebApps? How are you migrating the users from Windows 7 to Windows 10 to ensure they receive the same seamless user experience for their Desktop Progressive WebApps? Questions that you probably haven’t even considered yet or even realised that there was technology available to resolve this challenge. 

Avanite (www.avanite.com) is helping organisations across the globe to tackle this challenge and provide users with a seamless user experience for their Desktop Progressive WebApps. Avanite decouples the users WebCache and manages it separately from the browser allowing portability across different operating systems and platforms. The result a seamless user migration, faster logons and a personalised browser experience.

If you invested in traditional UEM / UPM then you need to take some time to look at Avanite and how we can work with you.

Dan O'Shaunessy

Business Development Director