Avoiding compatibility breakages

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 01 September 2011 14:41

IT Industry - Strategy

The goal of Microsoft's 'App Guy' is to get software to deliver business value to customers as quickly as possible, in part by minimising compatibility issues.

Chris Jackson, principal consultant and technical lead of the Windows Application Experience SWAT Team, says his objective is to make it easy for customers to upgrade to new platforms so they can realise the business benefits faster. One problem is that Microsoft tends to answer technology questions with tools, leaving its customers to figure out how to answer business questions such as 'if we upgrade to a new version of Office, how many more people will we need on the help desk during the transition?'

One approach is for the company to transfer knowledge gained by very early adopters to early adopters, and from them to mainstream customers.

However, there is a difference between early adopters and mainstream enterprises: the latter tend to run older software for longer, and that can put them in a bind. For example, an organisation may want to adopt Office 365, which rules out the continued use of Office 2003 and Internet Explorer 6. But there may be compatibility issues with other old software that prevents the use of newer versions of Office or IE.

Mr Jackson noted that there are significant differences between commercial software and public facing web sites on one hand, and in-house applications and web apps on the other, with compatibility issues more likely in the latter.

The average time between a mainstream enterprise establishing a business case for a new product and actually putting it to work is 12 to 18 months, Mr Jackson said. "They're not idiots, they're trying to do due dilligence" including checking for compatibility.

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