Access IT Automation Blog

Traditionally, application packaging and testing was a relatively siloed process done almost entirely by specialized teams. The application owners would submit a packaging or testing request and be available to supply further information, files, or data if needed. Other than that, they had to sit tight and wait. Also developers and technology and operations teams had to rely on the application packaging and testing teams — a process that could take weeks and hold up the development process or entire IT transformation projects.

Application packaging and testing isn't the same as it was 10 years ago. Traditionally, a somewhat siloed-off team took care of the actual process, but it would take days and sometimes weeks to find the right app owner, gather all the files and install instructions, and then cycle back with them again for UAT and sign-off. Now, with agile development and DevOps, this approach is impractical. For example, an internal developer might push out a new version of code three times a week and they cannot wait days every time to simply test it. Depending on what your development, packaging, testing, and release process looks like, you will need to choose a specific automation approach that is right for you.

According to a recent McKinsey study, 94% of the UK workforce lack the skills that will be required in 2030: "Without concerted action by employers, two-thirds of the UK workforce could lack basic digital skills by 2030, while more than 10 million people could be under-skilled in leadership, communication, and decision-making,” the report said.

This alone is a drastic issue to deal with — which only is made worse by new, additional challenges the country is facing: the wide-reaching effects on the general workforce and IT environments created by COVID and by the exit from the European Union at the end of the year (BREXIT), and new labour laws like IR35 which further narrows access to available resources. Let's have a closer look at the situation before we talk about some ways you can start to mitigate the associated risks. 

In the past 11 months, we have released a lot of new and exciting features and sometimes it is hard to keep track of them all. To make it easier for you, we have created an Access Capture Release Notes page. You can subscribe to it and always get the latest updates sent to your inbox as soon as they are posted. But we also wanted to take the opportunity today to highlight some of the most valuable and impressive features in a dedicated blog post. Our development team, headed up by Nik Maloney, has gone above and beyond and I am very proud of the outcome.

Over the past couple of months we have written several articles about MSIX, and for good reason. Not only has MSIX replaced MSI as Microsoft's app packaging format, but it is also materially better than MSI. By using MSIX with App Attach, Windows Virtual Desktop, and FSLogix, the process of migrating, upgrading, and keeping your apps up-to-date, in a timely and efficient manner and without productivity loss, has never been easier or more achievable.

In my 30+ years of experience in technology, I have migrated Windows 95 to XP, Windows NT to Windows 7, and now Windows 7 to Windows 10. And they all had one thing in common: I had to come in and rescue the migration projects many times because, initially, in peoples’ heads — even if they are technologists — OS migrations are simply thought of as clicking "Next" a few times. 

However, the opposite is true. In my opinion, upgrading to a new operating system in a large organization is one of the most difficult projects you can undertake. It touches every single person, application, and technology in the organization. You have to be extremely methodical and prepared in everything you do to finish the project successfully. Otherwise, your timeline, budget, and everything very quickly get away from you.

2020 has been a crazy year — there is no question about that. Suddenly having to switch to all of your employees working from home sent the vast majority of organizations scrambling, causing utter chaos. In fact, "companies spent an additional $15 billion a week on technology during the first wave of the pandemic, to ensure that employees could work from home safely," according to TechRepublic.

For the past five years (since the introduction of Windows-as-a-Service in 2015), we have talked about the necessity and benefits of Evergreen IT Management for enterprises. While both of those are still as relevant and crucial as before, there are new prevalent trends that will have a long-term impact on your Evergreen IT strategy. Today, I want to discuss the three most impactful ones: COVID-19 and the wide-spread adoption of remote work, Everything as Code (EaC), and Microsoft's Windows Virtual Desktop.

In one of the largest IT Transformation projects ever awarded to a single vendor, Accessplc, the IT consulting and IT talent recruitment sister company of Access IT Automation, enabled a large Swiss investment bank and financial institution to drive Digital Transformation by adopting Modern Desktop, Office 365, and Microsoft Cloud services. 

"Work-From-Home" (WFH) or "Work-From-Anywhere" (WFA) quickly became the new standard when countries went on lockdown in March due to the global pandemic of COVID-19. Despite an initial scrambling to get employees set up for remote work, companies are now starting to question the amount of physical office space and business trips needed in the future as employees were still productive at home.