Discovery: The beginning of the Migration journey

The focus of this blog is generally on application compatibility, however, one of the challenges an organisation has to face even before they identify and remediate their application compatibility issues is pretty basic; how many applications do I have? Digging deeper into this question includes the following broader issues;

•      How many applications do I have?
•      What versions are duplicates?
•      Who is using these applications, and where?
•      Are all of these applications used? 
•      Could they be shared across users?
•      Is there are a regional distribution to my application portfolio?

These questions are just the beginning of one the key aspects of a migration and is generally described as "Application Discovery" or simply the Discovery stage. A number of the ChangeBASE presentation include this stage as necessary and immediate precursor to the application compatibility assessment and remediation stage. Here is a quick snap-shot of one our standard diagrams that illustrates this application lifecycle approach;

As you can see the arrow starting from the left starts at Discovery and works its way through the assess, fix, deploy and test (UAT) stages and subsequently ends back up at the Discovery stage again. I think that the thinking here is that "Change Never Stops" and that as soon as something is deployed, you will verify it's status and then plan the next change.

And this really follows the thinking of the Quest "Chained" Solution philosophy. By chaining a number of focussed products that cover the spectrum of the migration challenges that enterprises face today.

Delving into the Discovery solution offered by Quest, ScriptLogic Asset Manager allows remote scanning of PC's servers and attached hardware to deliver a complete inventory (and usage) of your application and asset portfolio.

• Software Recognition: Identify and categorise more than 85% of all software found without any manual intervention. The ScriptLogic Software Pattern Identification Database (SPID) includes more than 200,000 software packages, including bundles, so that you can even differentiate between editions of common software
• Submit Software for Identification: If your software isn’t in the SPID database already, you can upload the Software DNA pattern to us, and ScriptLogic Asset Manager will identify it and add it to the next update. 
• License Management: Import software license agreements and link them with the applications that are installed.
• Software Metering: Passive metering can track when and how often software is used. Active metering will let 100 run, but will stop the 101st copy in its tracks.
• Compliance Reporting: Asset Manager has over 120 pre-defined reports including installed software, license compliance, usage reporting and more. 
• Block Unapproved Applications: Report and alert on new applications that have been added to your network and prevent unwanted software from being run.

You can find more about ScriptLogic Asset Manager here: http://www.scriptlogic.com/products/asset-manager/