Quest Eases Windows XP to Windows 7 Migration Challenges

Combination of ChangeBASE and Asset Manager can cut migration time in half.

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As Microsoft prepares to end support for Windows XP, time is winding down for organizations that must move to Windows 7 and have not yet begun preparation for the migration. This inevitable process can take as long as two years, and many companies are encountering hurdles along the way, which only add significant time, cost and complexity to the process.

To ease this reality, Quest Software is now offering a unique combination of Quest Workspace ChangeBASE and Workspace Asset Manager solutions from its User Workspace Management portfolio to simplify, streamline. and reduce the costs of Windows 7 deployments.

Quest Software has released new versions of its Workspace ChangeBASE and Workspace Asset Manager solutions that shorten the average migration time by up to one-half, translating to as much as six months

Quest ChangeBASE and Asset Manager work seamlessly together to provide both short-and long-term value, taking on the critical task of identifying and cleaning up applications to ensure a rapid and efficient migration, then managing the ongoing application environment with dynamic updates based on application compatibility rule information as well as monthly updates of OS patches.

With these latest solutions, Quest integrates application compatibility with application discovery to create a complete user workspace management portfolio that reduces Windows 7 deployment challenges.

As a longtime trusted advisor to 80 percent of the Fortune 500 companies, Quest provides advice on migration deployments -- from pre-deployment preparation to in-the-trenches support and ongoing maintenance and management. Quest’s migration experts have helped customers reduce migration times, paring the average six-month application compatibility period down to one week or less. 


Quest Workspace ChangeBASE 5.0 addresses application compatibility issues so migrations to Windows 7, as well as virtualized desktop and application technologies, save time and increase an organization’s agility. The savings are substantial in terms of cost, effort, and time, due to ChangeBASE’s unique automated solution. The following new features focus on ease of management:

  • Step-by-Step Application Remediation: Get details about what, exactly, all the issues mean, and more important, how to fix them. Fixes can be applied on an individual application or in bulk.

  • Application readiness dashboards: Simplify tracking of application readiness, resources, and progress with online dashboards and reporting features that provide real-time insight on compatibility projects using graphs, charts, calculators, project tracking, and next-step wizards.

  • Automated application virtualization: Accelerate delivery of the user workspace by automating application virtualization and reducing packaging times to Microsoft App -V, VMware ThinApp, Citrix XenApp, and Symantec SWV.

Quest Workspace Asset Manager 9.0 provides automated, complete application discovery. The product’s ability to optimize use of software licenses in physical and virtual environments helps organizations decrease costs by keeping and purchasing only those applications the business needs, while mitigating risks associated with license compliance. New features in Asset Manager include:

  • Automatic software metering: Save countless hours required to manually define application executables, and provide valuable input to a pre-migration application portfolio assessment with automated software usage tracking and metering for thousands of software packages.

  • Increased license management automation: After migration, keep costs controlled by automating tracking and reporting on software usage and upgrade rights, mainting an upgrade chain and history for licenses, importing contract use rights, and locating the least expensive upgrade licenses.

  • Enhanced visibility: Maintain better ongoing control over the entire application environment with more than 20 alerts that add new visibility to software license and compliance status; application usage; and contract, asset scan, and hardware resource status.

  • Enhanced integration with Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix EdgeSight means the entire virtual software environment can be managed and supported from simplified, centralized views.

More information is available at www.quest.com.

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