The digital workplace has transformed dramatically over the last few years. Cloud-native endpoint management, end-user experiences, and self-service capabilities have all driven new levels of productivity. But one area remains stuck in the past: Windows application packaging.
What was once a manageable outsourced task has become a low-margin operation where teams manually process the same applications with lengthy turnaround times. While the broader IT landscape accelerates, growing volumes of security updates are turning this bottleneck into a genuine risk.
Windows application packaging automation exists but it’s underutilized, and maintaining the status quo is becoming unsustainable.
In this blog, we explore why service providers must modernize their application packaging and testing operations—or risk losing competitive ground.
Table of Contents:
- The time warp that's draining profitability
- The hidden costs of manual Application Management
- How the industry stalled after MSI
- What service providers are facing
- The Service Provider reality
- The complexity burden that automation solves
- The desktop reality: it's not going away
- Where leaders are creating competitive divergence
- The opportunity to lead, not lag
The time warp that's draining profitability
In 2004, Facebook was still a college experiment, smartphones weren’t mainstream, and "the cloud" was something you'd see in the sky. Meanwhile, IT technicians are manually packaging Windows applications using processes that would be familiar to most service providers working today.
Fast-forward to 2025. We carry supercomputers in our pockets, AI writes 60% of code, and entire infrastructures spin up in seconds. Yet walk into most enterprise IT departments, and you'll find highly skilled engineers still manually editing application package installers in very much the same way.
🚫 20–30 day deployment cycles
⚙️ Manual resource-heavy tasks
📉 Scaling limits and SLA bottlenecks
In a world where infrastructure can be spun up in minutes, it still takes many service providers weeks to deliver a single Windows app update. It used to be a tech limitation—now it’s a process failure.
The hidden costs of manual Windows Application Management
While some forward-thinking service providers are embracing automation to gain a competitive advantage, many are still wrestling with manual processes that are no longer suitable for today's market:
-
Wasted time: 20+ days per update erodes SLA performance, flexibility, and competitiveness.
-
High cost per app: Manual, high-touch processes drive cost inefficiency, reducing demand.
-
Talent drain: Skilled engineer expertise is wasted on low value, repeatable tasks.
-
Client frustration: Enterprises expect velocity and modern service delivery.
-
Lost opportunity: Resources spent on outdated methods can't be invested in strategic growth.
How the industry stalled
MSI and its transform file companion (.MST) revolutionized software deployment. Tools like InstallShield and Wise Package Studio emerged, followed by Microsoft Systems Management Server, creating what felt like the industry's final answer.
The industry collectively decided that the space race was over.
But innovation plateaued.
While innovations like MSIX and cloud deployment through platforms like Microsoft Intune have simplified certain aspects of application management, the core packaging and testing processes underneath remain largely manual for most service providers. The question isn't whether these tools are valuable—it's whether service providers are maximizing their automation potential and delivering operational excellence that keeps and grows their business.
But what if the real opportunity lies in fully leveraging Windows app management automation capabilities that most providers haven't yet discovered?
What service providers are facing
Even if you know the limitations of your current approach, the impact is likely worse than you think:
-
Capacity ceilings: You can only manage a fraction of your clients’ total apps.
-
Loss of deals: Competitors offer faster timelines, lower costs, and better SLAs.
-
Outdated proposals: Manual SLAs no longer win enterprise trust.
Windows app management automation isn’t just a differentiator—it’s becoming the baseline expectation.
💡 Want a proven framework to modernize application management?
Download the Windows Application Management Playbook and discover strategies to streamline, automate, and scale.
The Service Provider reality
As an IT service provider, you're likely feeling this automation gap in your bottom line:
- Capacity constraints: Manual processes limit the number of applications you can realistically manage per client. I've seen enterprise clients with thousands of managed apps, and the service provider only covers 250 updates per annum.
- Competitive pressure: Forward-thinking competitors are winning deals by promising faster deployment cycles, with greater coverage and better rates.
- Client expectations: Enterprises expect modern efficiency, but receive processes that haven't evolved since broadband was a luxury.
If your proposals still include timelines reflecting manual processes, then you're vulnerable to competitors who've found better ways to reduce cost per app while delivering faster, more reliable outcomes.
The service providers who are winning understand that operational excellence isn't just about doing things right—it's about doing them efficiently enough to scale profitably.
The complexity burden that automation solves
Consider what your teams navigate for every application update: gathering dependencies, configuration mapping, security and compatibility testing, cross-team coordination, forum diving for missing information, and troubleshooting deployment failures.
Each step multiplies complexity. Each handoff introduces a delay. Each manual process creates a point of failure.
Your clients don't see this complexity—they just see slow delivery and wonder why Windows application management feels like a bottleneck to many of their critical digital workplace initiatives.
But what if you had a system that thinks like a packager, adapts to each application's unique needs, and delivers with repeatable precision, at scale, and without increasing headcount? Modern automation platforms can provide intelligent suggestions, proven command-line success rates, and eliminate the guesswork that consumes your technical resources.
The desktop reality: it's not going away
Despite years of “everything to the cloud” narratives, desktop applications aren't disappearing—they're proliferating:
-
AI capabilities require local processing
-
Security-conscious organizations retain sensitive apps on-prem
-
Hybrid work demands offline functionality.
You could argue that cloud computing hasn't eliminated desktop applications—it's made management more complex by adding hybrid deployment scenarios, including Windows 365 environments that demand new levels of application compatibility and performance optimization.
Where leaders are creating competitive divergence
While many remain locked into manual processes, forward-looking service providers are:
-
Automating Windows app packaging & testing at scale
-
Handling larger app portfolios with smaller teams
-
Improving deployment velocity & reliability
- Reducing human error through automated testing
-
Refocusing experts on strategic projects
Meanwhile, others remain locked in legacy models, watching their margins shrink whilst customer expectations rise.
🚀 Service providers are scaling faster with automation—not more headcount.
Explore Juriba’s App Readiness Platform to see how you can automate 80% of packaging tasks and cut deployment time by 93%.
The opportunity to lead, not lag
The divide between modernized and manual service providers is growing daily. The path forward is clear:
-
Automate what can be automated
-
Collaborate with technology innovators
-
Focus skilled engineers on transformation, not repetition
What's next
In our next post, we’ll explore how Juriba’s deep expertise in packaging automation is helping service providers and enterprises evolve their app readiness strategies—and how collaboration is at the core of that transformation.
Topics:
