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Redmond Clears Barriers Before Vista

Assessment, deployment tools may ease transition

By David Worthington

March 15, 2007 — (Page 1 of 2)
Transitioning to Windows Vista is no small order for enterprises: Microsoft has changed the inner workings of Windows and clamped down on previously liberal user account permissions. IT administrators must triage applications for compatibility, and make certain that individual desktops are powerful enough to run Microsoft’s latest operating system.

Responding to those challenges, Microsoft last month released its updated Windows Vista deployment tools. The tools peruse networks for incompatibilities, “virtualize” applications, assist in the deployment of Windows, and automate product activation.

Microsoft starts in the trenches—with applications. The Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT) 5.0 is composed of evaluators and tools that determine application compatibility—for commercial and in-house software—before Windows Vista is deployed. ACT does not mitigate problems, but will provide developers with suggested fixes.

Meanwhile, on Feb. 21, Redmond published a list of compliant applications that received either “Certified for Windows Vista” or “Works with Windows Vista” status. Of the 787 applications initially listed, 104 were certified for Windows Vista. Applications that have been certified have met the technical requirements of Microsoft’s testing program. The conditions for the “Works with Vista” tag are not as rigorous: Application vendors must document known compatibility issues, which must be nonfatal in nature. Security vendors Symantec and McAfee are notable standouts; none of their products are listed in either category, while Trend Micro did earn certification for its client and server-side products.

Microsoft is offering vouchers of up to US$1,000 as an enticement for developers to certify their products with VeriTest, a credentialed third-party testing service. VeriTest is certified by Microsoft to follow the Windows logo certification program.

While a variety of culprits can make applications incompatible in Windows Vista, its User Account Control (UAC) security layer may cause applications that require administrator-level permissions to fail. Previously, many legitimate applications were programmed with the assumption that the user had these rights and would not run otherwise. UAC runs applications at varying permission levels and provides file and registry virtualization for applications that require what would otherwise be a dangerous degree of access.

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