Redmond Clears Barriers Before Vista

Assessment, deployment tools may ease transition

By David Worthington

March 15, 2007 —

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.

“Just like developers assumed that every user would be an administrator, some corporate developers would have made the same assumption,” said Michael Cherry, lead analyst for Windows at analyst firm Directions on Microsoft.

If anything, Cherry faults Microsoft for not taking UAC far enough. “Microsoft should have taken an even tougher line on User Account Control…[but instead] is always balancing backwards compatibility with security. It could have held the line and gotten users to fix their applications. If not now, when? If an application doesn’t work with User Account Control, we are talking about bad programming.”

VIRTUALLY COMPATIBLE
Some programming is not bad—it’s just incompatible. That may lead users to virtualize other operating systems within Windows Vista. Microsoft’s solution is Virtual PC 2007 (VPC), which will run legacy or custom applications under a sandboxed software environment, with 64-bit Windows Vista support; the company claims that performance is better than earlier versions of VPC. Virtual PC 2007 also allows full use of network hardware that offers the Preboot Execution Environment for remote bootstrap support.

Cherry emphasized the importance of virtualization in enterprise deployments of Windows Vista, stating that the onus is on developers to balance the utility of the application against the work needed to make it work under Vista. “Using a virtual machine is often better than mucking with it. If you can’t change the application, run it in a virtual machine,” said Cherry.

Other tools are aimed at deploying Windows Vista itself: It will not run, or run well, on hardware that does not meet or exceed its credentials, and some devices are simply incompatible. Windows Vista Hardware Assessment 1.0 is tasked to filter out unqualified PCs. The tool runs over networks.

Microsoft Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment 2007 deploys Windows on qualified PCs.

Every instance of Windows Vista must be “activated” subsequent to its installation. Two options exist for enterprise activation: the Volume Activation Management Tool and the Key Management Service for Windows Server 2003. The former centrally manages and automates activation using a multiple activation key, and the latter hosts activation as a local service.

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Windows Vista Service Pack 1 released The first major update to Windows Vista has been made widely available; additional language versions are expected next month.

Windows & .NET Watch: A wide view of Vista for developers Changes Vista brings to the Windows environment can provide developers with new and better ways to work

Microsoft clears the path for Azure An expansion of SQL Data Services and the creation of guides to cloud computing are the groundwork Microsoft is laying for potential Azure users. The company expects it to hit the market by the end of the year.

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