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What is gone in App-V 5?

with 6 comments

My colleague Sascha Thiede who’s a Thinapp specialist at VMware in Central EMEA and I just had a conversation about the new Microsoft App-V version 5 which was released today within the MDOP 2012. There are loads of changes and “enhancements” in the new version which doesn’t make it easier for customers to manage their legacy systems. As you may know the support for Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 is going EOL and this seems to be reflected into App-V 5 as the new application virtualization version doesn’t support Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 anymore. These are still supported in 4.6 and you can also run the 4.6 and 5.0 servers side by side but is this really a good option? In the App-V supported configurations documentation you’ll find only Windows 7 and Windows 8 as supported client OS. Does that mean that Windows Vista is also not longer supported?

With version 5 of App-V, the client needs .NET 3.5, .NET 4 and Silverlight installed on the system. A great enhancements in our eyes is the “compatibility” to VDI. You can now disable the local application cache which makes of course sense.

Let’s see what additionally to the support is gone.

  • No support for 16-Bit apps (Thinapp doesn’t have that one a 64-Bit system, but on 32-Bit)

App-V is grown up to a good solution within the last years since it was Softgrid but it still has a bloated machinery in the backend. You need a server or more which will server the roles Publishing, Streaming and Database, maybe SCCM and of course we shouldn’t forget IIS in some cases.

It’s just our private opinion but compared to Thinapp, App-V does cost a fortune. Think about the licenses needed for MDOP, (Ok, that’s included in an EA), the licenses for the server OS, the database, the hardware or resources, maintenance.

Think about Thinapp…

No need for a backend infrastructure, with that no additional licenses for servers, no hardware + maintanance (only file service, storage)

  • Agentless/Clientless Architecture
  • Pakets still run on Windows XP, Vista and Windows Server 2003
  • Simply plugs in any Enterprise Software Deployment Framework (SCCM, Landesk, Enteo, Matrix42 and more…)
  • Standard formats (EXE or MSI)
  • Easily integrates into any existing software deployment process
  • Thinapp supports IE6, IE7 and IE8 virtualization
  • Execute applications in user mode with no administrative rights
  • Browser virtualization with URL specific control (ThinDirect)

What’s your opinion on that?

 

 

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Written by Christoph Harding

November 1st, 2012 at 4:57 pm

Posted in ThinApp

Tagged with , ,

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  • Rick

    I don’t have experience with App-V, but I have used ThinApp and love the fact that ThinApp can be installed on any workstation, requiring no infrastructure as you say.  It’s such a lightweight application, as it should be!  The whole idea is to make application virtualization easy.  Granted, ThinApp itself does not have any deployment mechanism as it sounds like App-V does.  What I find interesting is the lack of XP support going forward.  One of the benefits of virtualization is that you could make legacy systems stick around for awhile and make them run on new hardware, so that’s a bit disappointing.

  • http://www.cd-k.de/ Christoph Harding

    Hi Rick, 

    you’re completely right that Thinapp doesn’t have a deployment mechanism but this is by design as most of the customers already have a ESD solution and they doesn’t want to have another mechanism. If they haven’t a solution there is the way to stream the Thinapp package without client and backend or install the wrapped EXE (in MSI) via a Group Policy.

    Regards.

    Christoph

  • http://thinapp.wordpress.com/ Holger Kuehn

    Hi Christoph,

    don´t forget that APP-V 5 has a new file Format. That means, you have to convert your old packages, but not all packages can be converted. You have to re-Seqence these packages and this is bad because it costs time and money.

  • http://www.benway.net JasonB

    Biggest issue for us with thinapp was the agent running in memory caused issues on Xenapp for us.

  • http://www.facebook.com/richard.ingram.564 Richard Ingram

    Since when did App-v have to have the backend server!? It is designed to run standalone too. 

  • http://profiles.google.com/porpoise1877 Philip Beadman

    I like the portability of ThinApp, but having worked with SoftGrid/App-V I appreciate the backend infrastructure. It’s actually one feature I wish ThinApp had. It’s nice to be able to centrally manage your App-V applications, control versioning, file associations, etc.. via a management console.