Lesson Four: Application Management

This week's lesson continued a trend of introducing new and interesting stuff that Microsoft has built into their modern client operating systems.  In this lesson we concentrated on application management in Windows 7 and Windows 8.  In these operating systems, the kernel has been entirely rebuilt in order to introduce security measures that didn't exist in earlier versions of Windows.  In Windows XP and earlier, many application expect to run with administrative controls.  Beginning with Windows Vista, Microsoft introduced the User Account Control (UAC), which intercepts and informs the user of application requests for elevated privilege.  This can be managed in different ways through local security policy if needed.

If an organization needs to use an application that was written for older versions of Windows, one can use the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) to provide access with Windows 7 or 8, or edit compatibility setting manually for the current user or all users on a system.  In Windows 7 Professional and above, there is also a Windows XP virtual machine that is available to run the application in a virtualized environment.

Another fascinating development is the App-V server, built into Windows Server 2012.  This server role allows deployment of applications only to designated systems if and when needed.  The organization can choose to stream the app from one or more servers as needed, or to cache the app on the user's machine.  This allows organization to only purchase as many seat licenses as they might need, rather than the common practice of buying a copy of an app for each machine in the organization.

The lesson closed with a look at managing apps in the Windows Store.  This effort to keep your application dollars flowing to Redmond can be managed in great detail or disabled completely by the system administrator.

This lesson was really eye-opening; looking forward to much more in the weeks to come!