Windows 8 may be on the horizon, but we should embrace inevitability of rapid software transitions.

With Windows 8 now firmly on the horizon - thanks to a public beta release and an explosion of activity in the IT world is likely to ensue. Having major fundamental changes, Windows 8 is said to offer a myriad of new features and is also said to support the enterprise transition to a world of mobility, and its adoption of IT consumerised devices. Whilst businesses are still reeling from Windows 7 migration, or are still in the early stages of migrating, Windows 8 is likely to strike fear in the minds of IT folk around the globe, not least because organisations feel held hostage by software transitions.

Windows 8, whilst said to offer this vastly different set of functionalities, may not quite stack up to what it purports to deliver. And with transition to the cloud very much supported in Windows 7, for companies viewing cloud computing as a priority, halting progress wouldn't make sense. However, despite all the benefits of keeping on track with a Windows 7 migration, there will be a few that might prefer to take a 'wait and see' approach, take a look at the Beta and watch while Windows 8 begins to trickle into the environment on mobile devices.

For businesses without clear methodologies and automated processes for application readiness in place, this could further delay the transition to Windows 7, and ultimately mean a haphazard approach to making the full transition from XP before it expires and becomes unsupported in 2014.

Sean Bryson, Director, Specialised Services at Hitachi Consulting concurs, "Windows 8 is a vast change in the operating system, well get a lot of interest once the Beta is out there, and a lot of questions from our customers about what it means for them. Ultimately though, taking a methodical, automated approach to the transition is what will be key - whether that's Windows 7 or 8 - and we'd always advise our customers to use tools that will facilitate that."

Ultimately, preparing and deploying applications in a reliable consistent manner is incredibly difficult and requirements to ensure successful migration are many:

- Application discovery

- Cataloguing

- Compatibility testing 

- Remediation and conversion

- Software packaging

- Application virtualisation

- Deployment to the cloud

Advancements in the world of technology will continue to move at a pace far quicker than we can accommodate, and with this in mind enterprises will need to embrace the inevitability of regular software transitions. Preparedness will be the key to such an approach, and implementing tools that will automate the entire application compatibility, software repackaging and OS/software deployment process will be the only way to significantly reduce the cost and complexity of future migrations.

www.flexerosoftware.com

Toby Martin, Director of product management at Flexera Software