AppV : Product of Virtual World

Author  Saniya Shaikh

If your business has technology assisting its operations and you haven’t heard of virtualization yet, you may be living under a rock. The benefits of virtualization are tremendous in today’s technology-driven organizations, and when done properly can save you a lot of money and time. Virtualization uses software to simulate the existence of hardware and create a virtual computer system. The primary goal is to ensure that businesses can run multiple apps and operating systems on a single server to leverage economies of scale and efficiency.

If you are interested in creating a user centric model of your computing resources (both hardware and software) then the desktop needs to be broken down into layer to make it dynamic. Application virtualization is just one of those layers. BYOD (bring your own device) is a trend that is here to stay. But you don’t need to fear this movement, rather you can leverage all of that free hardware is provided by your users.

Application virtualization makes software much more portable, meaning it’s far easier to deploy to unmanaged computers. While not every vendor may offer such a license, many do, and this is another money-saving opportunity where you might be able to reduce your computer labs’ footprint whilst improving the availability of specialist software. This technology is also a boon in Covid situation wherein work from home is being promoted on large scale and necessity of the world at the moment, with poor network bandwidth and VPN connection lowering down the productive hours.

Also the benefits of VDI are often limited by an inefficient application deployment solution. Just as with physical builds, it’s still essential to maintain the integrity of your VDI images. Through the implementation of application virtualization, you can separate the application from the operating system, making your images smaller and rebuilds much less painful.

 

Knowing All about Application Virtualization?

Microsoft Application Virtualization, also known as App-V, is a component of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack .Application virtualization has two forms Client side and Server side. It runs on top of the Operation System that manages the functioning of systems. Which allows an application to run in an artificial environment and to remotely host the application icon, successfully launch and access it and not particularly install the complete application.

The Pre-Virtualization World

In a world before virtualization, servers would traditionally run one application on one server with one operating system. In the old system, the number of servers would continue to mount since every new app required its own server and operating system.

As a result, expensive hardware resources were being purchased, but not used. Each server would only use about 12% of its resources. Almost 88% of server resources were completely unutilized.

The Virtualized World

Although virtualization technology has existed in various forms since the late 1960s, mainstream adoption didn’t occur until the early 2000s.

Virtualization is possible because of a software layer called a hypervisor. The first step of the virtualization process is installing the hypervisor onto a server. After the hypervisor is up and running, multiple “software containers” known as virtual machines (VMs) are built on top of the hypervisor

Market Demand:

The Application virtualization market size is expected to grow up to USD 4.4 billion by 2023, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 14.0% during the forecast period. The growth ask for providing solutions for lengthy application installation process with improved security and simplifying the management of overall application cycle are the major growth factors for the market

The number of applications that is being used across industries is increasing day by day because of which the use of services such as product up gradation, maintenance, training, and consulting have also increased in the market. Services in the market are segmented into two categories, namely, support & maintenance and training & consulting. The support and maintenance service include infrastructure security and service life cycle management while the professional service include development outsourcing service and IT consulting. Most of the application virtualization vendor has dedicated support team serving the customers globally.

 Key Application Virtualization Market Players

The major vendors in the market are Microsoft (US), Symantec Corporation (US), VMware (US), Citrix Systems (US), Red Hat (US), Oracle (US), Google (US), Dell (US), Micro Focus (UK), Parallels International (US), Systancia (France), Accops (India), NComputing (South Korea), Sangfor Technologies (China), NextAxiom Technology (US)

 To setup an AppV infrastructure in our business we need to take care about below components and features, which works at its best.

AppV Environment Features:

• AppV Client: It enables the AppV application to work and also enables the machine to receive and stream line the application from server.
• Stand Alone: AppV can also be deployed in standalone state with no requirement for backend infrastructure.
• Citrix XenApp : Also Supports deployment of Application.

(Components required for setting up AppV Management server)

• AppV Version 5.0: Application can be assigned by Active directory using groups depending upon your configuration setup. You can use user objects in the group or computer objects.
• AppV 5.0 Web services: This version holds three different web services in it, one can host it in either on single server or on two different server.
• Database: Includes 2 Database

1. 1. Reporting Server Database: It tracks the application usage with its predefined dynamic criteria etc.
   2. Management Server Database : Contains Meta data related to AppV applications

• AppV Management console: it’s a AppV website used to create, host and publish application  on AD Group.
• Application icon: As soon as the user double clicks on the icon, in the backend the application will begin to download or cache on to the user machine.
• Protocols: HTTPS / HTTP along with SMB block helps to launch the application which was been delivered with different method.

Application Virtualization technology has been available for almost a decade, but actual usage of the technology has been limited. Many companies that own licenses to use the technology have either not got around to implementing it or still haven’t bought into the Return on Investment. As such, I’d like to address some of the main benefits of Application Virtualization

There are different ways of implementing a virtualized application, and one that is 100% virtualized is not installed the way users of Windows, Linux and Mac applications know it; the approach is entirely different, but its execution appears to be the same on the surface

Do find the App infrastructure workflow, installation guide, and the reason why business is switching to AppV nowadays and where one can find AppV in depth in the upcoming Blog.

Thought to Pen down the glimpse of AppV and its fruitful outcome. Proud to have this as my first blog.