Microsoft Virtualization Secrets

Using App-V in Your Organization

At this point, you have taken a deep look at App-V, including how it works at a technical level and what the infrastructure requires. This section looks at why an organization might benefit from using App-V, how to determine whether your business needs are a good match for it, and how others use App-V. It also describes some complementary technologies.

Benefits of App-V

I’ve touched on some of App-V’s benefits in previous parts of this chapter, but this section focuses on them because they are a critical aspect of the total cost of ownership (TCO) of virtualizing your applications, and justifying the adoption of App-V to senior management and C-level executives. App-V is a great technology and I personally believe it has a place in every IT infrastructure, but as an IT specialist you need to be able to explain to the people writing the checks why it’s needed.

Eliminating the application installation on the client is a key feature of App-V and solves a number of common challenges in organizations:

• First, application-to-application compatibility problems caused by conflicts are solved by App-V because applications are not installed on the operating system. This removes the possibility of conflicts because virtual applications cannot see each other.
• Second, the common performance degradation of a desktop system over time—as more applications are installed, partially uninstalled, repaired, and updated, and more components are registered, bloating the ...