Written by Kevin Cooke

Enterprises today are faced with many challenges. Among those is the struggle surrounding the design, deployment, management and operations that support desktop applications. The demand for applications is increasing at an exponential rate, and organizations are being forced to consider platforms that include the support of traditional physical PCs, virtual and cloud-based workspaces and architectures.

At the same time, users have come to expect applications to ‘just work' on whatever device they have at hand. Combined with the notion that for many organizations, workspaces can be a mix of various delivery approaches, it is vital to better understand application use, as well as information such as versioning, resource consumption and application user experience.

The experts at Liquidware have authored a whitepaper that outlines and defines three major lifecycle stages in the application lifecycle-analysis, user experience baselining and operationalization-each of which is composed of several crucial steps. The paper also provides practical use examples that will help you create and execute an application-lifecycle methodology using Stratusphere UX from Liquidware.

[ Watch the VMblog video interview with Kevin Cooke on Stratusphere UX 6.0 ]

Application Analysis

The first component in this methodology is application analysis, a process defined by the collection of application data for the benefit of making better decisions within the enterprise. Without detailed information on the current state of your organization's applications-including usage-you may be starting a process without having an understanding of core and fundamental information. For example, the following list comprises just a handful of the questions you will ultimately be required to understand and address:

• How many applications are installed?
• What are the different release versions of specific applications?
• Can you identify, among all installed applications, which are actually used and then quantify their use?
• Do you have an understanding of your enterprise's application-delivery complexity?
• Are you able to identify use trends by time of day, user, department and location?
• Have you measured consumption (RAM, CPU, IOPs), either by application or in aggregate?
• Are you able to quantify application user experience?

The factors above are just a sample of analysis points that must be considered to successfully define an application analysis.

Application User Experience Baselining

The application-user-experience baselining strategy component is typically denoted as a movement from a proof-of-concept or pilot phase to a production phase in the deployment of workspace applications. This phase can be considered when considering a new application, when defining of casting an overall application strategy (i.e., master image creation) or when looking to examine and define the optimal user experience for your existing workspace applications.

But what is application-experience baselining? And how can it work for you? Validation of application-user experience and performance allows you to leverage the baseline and normal thresholds captured during the application assessment phase. It serves as a guide for measuring and comparing as you move through project stages. Periodic measurements ensure that the target application strategy and mapping continue to meet all defined goals.

Application Operationalization

The third and last lifecycle-management phase is application operationalization. Once you have moved an application through the analysis and baseline performance phases-to ensure you're meeting user and business expectations-you will need to move into an operational lifecycle phase.

This is where ongoing support, analysis and visibility become critical for monitoring, diagnosing and optimizing application delivery over time. Today applications exist and are deployed in a number of ways, and on complex and varied platforms. No longer is managing the day-to-day challenges of workspace applications a simple matter of making sure they are baked into your master image. You must have an understanding of the deployment approach, the resources and the infrastructure to support that delivery and most important, conditions under which your users are experiencing issues.

Conclusion

When considering an application lifecycle management approach, it's important to go beyond the obvious tasks of simply baking all of your applications into a single image and dealing with challenges as they arise. Considering actual application use, licensing, Windows delivery modalities and the complexity of application interaction, used versus installed and ensuring you appropriately deliver applications where needed, it is also important to follow a proven set of guidelines and best practices. Meeting these guidelines involves setting technical, user-experience and business goals for your projects.

To learn more about this management process and better understand how you can put a process in place at your organization, download the Application Lifecycle Management Whitepaper from Liquidware (http://info.liquidwarelabs.com/New-Application-Lifecycle-Management_Whitepaper-Landing-Page.html).

Previously, this effort required a substantial amount of guesswork, but as analysis and best practices have evolved, so have the solutions to support this endeavor. Liquidware has helped guide customers and adopt a thorough applications lifecycle management approach. Visibility and clear application consumption information is critical; and the more you know about your applications, the easier it will be to take action.

Liquidware is the leader in desktop transformation solutions for next-generation physical and virtual desktops, including VMware Horizon, Citrix XenDesktop, Red Hat and Microsoft Windows. The company's innovative Stratusphere product supports assessment, design, monitoring and diagnostics of virtual desktop environments. Liquidware products are VMware-certified and Citrix Ready, and they are available through a global network of partners. Visit www.liquidware.com for more information.

Download the Application Lifecycle Management from Liquidware at http://info.liquidwarelabs.com/New-Application-Lifecycle-Management_Whitepaper-Landing-Page.html

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About the Author

Kevin Cooke - Director Product Marketing 
Kevin is a Director of Product Marketing at Liquidware, where he champions the Stratusphere UX solutions and helping organizations reap the transformational benefits of next-generation end user computing. Kevin has spent some time in the trenches as an IT professional, and as a solution provider, driving virtualization and next-generation data center architectures. Prior to this, he worked as an editor and journalist at a couple of well-known industry publications-needless to say, he has opinions and isn't afraid to share them.