Most modern software applications have different uses, varying levels of complexity according to a user’s role and requirements, and licensing models. We know that unpicking this complexity and finding the best fit for what your organisation needs while keeping costs under control is not always the easiest balance to find.
Similarly, the amount of time needed to support, patch and configure these applications across the organisation’s entire network can be a drain on business and IT resources, especially as the estate grows.
In the age where the need to balance data protection and workforce productivity is perhaps more acute than ever before, IT teams face the task of managing the mobile devices that are being used to access company data, manage the mobile apps portfolio that serves business needs, protect company information by helping to control the way users access and share it, and ensure that devices and apps are compliant with company security requirements.
Urban sprawl
In the same way Software that is not managed typically results in many different versions of software being installed across a company’s IT estate. This can bring more deployment and support overheads to IT, as well as the obvious cost inefficiencies created by overlapping functionality.
Even in smaller organisations, if they are left unchecked, software portfolios can quickly resemble urban sprawl in that they overlap, burst out in every direction, and have no plan or pattern.
How can an application packaging service help?
Firstly it helps your business to deploy third party or in-house software applications to include additional parameters, rolled-in software patches/services packages or other software dependencies needed by the application but not present on the target business machines.
Organisations typically use software deployment tools such as SCCM (Microsoft System Centre Configuration Management) to manage the distribution of software applications to network-based desktops and laptops. This software is a replacement for manual software installations that IT would otherwise need to do on each device as an efficient way to deliver particular applications to different users, and in a way that can be more easily supported by IT.
Application packaging helps to configure applications so they can be deployed by the SCCM. This packaging process can sometimes be straightforward and simple for internal IT teams to complete themselves. However it’s also common for the software or the required configurations to be too complex or out of scope for business abilities to perform themselves, which is where application packaging services really demonstrate their worth.
In a nutshell
The key benefits of application packaging are:
- Reduced software management costs
- Increased system performance
- Reduce operational management overhead
- Increase user productivity
- Reduce time of management
In addition to preventing sprawl, the service enables you to protect on-premises email and data so that it can be accessed by mobile devices, protect your Office 365 email and data so that it can be safely accessed by mobile devices, and issue business-owned phones to your users. It also facilitates the ability to offer a BYOD personal device programme to all users seamlessly and securely.
What’s the solution?
PAV’s application packaging & virtualisation services help realise these benefits by streamlining and configuring a business’s expansive software estate into a managed, documented portfolio of deployable packages.
We have the skills and in-house tools to package or virtualise an organisation’s software, enabling the business to benefit from reduced management requirements and operational costs as well seeing potential increases in systems performance as a result.
See it in action
Click here or on the button below to register for a short Webex demo from one of our specialists.
