Did you know that according to a Security Signals report for March 2021, more than 80% of enterprises said they have experienced at least one firmware attack in the past two years, but only 29% of security budgets are allocated to protect firmware? Outdated hardware is increasingly becoming a high-profile security vulnerability.

As if that wasn't enough cause to finally invest in strategically planned, ongoing Evergreen hardware refresh management, a 2019 Currys PC World study revealed that UK employees are wasting a whopping 46 minutes a day (or almost 4 hours a week) and losing productivity due to poor performance caused by their outdated hardware. 

Last week we explored why so many enterprises are stuck on a particular Windows 10 version, 1809 to be exact. This situation is causing millions of enterprise users to run on an unsupported operating system which not only opens them up to possible cybersecurity vulnerabilities but also impacts their performance and productivity.

However, with the somewhat surprising announcement of Windows 11, many possible upgrade strategies have to be reconsidered — leaving many organizations asking which version they should upgrade to if they are currently stuck on Windows 10 version 1809, and whether or not they should consider Windows 11 at this point.

In a recent vendor briefing with Gartner about how to best manage the Windows Servicing process, the Gartner analysts mentioned that they are currently getting a lot of questions from enterprises are stuck on Windows 10 1809. This reflects our experience as well. In the past five or six months, we have increasingly gotten inquiries from large companies who had initially migrated from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and had planned to use the support windows to sort out their Evergreen IT management, but they never got around to it because COVID struck.

That is why today I want to take a closer look at why these organizations are getting stuck and show you the steps you can take to get unstuck in the fastest and most efficient way possible.

In a recent vendor briefing with Gartner, they mentioned that many large enterprises are getting stuck on Windows 10 1809 because they have not been able to streamline and automate the processes required for efficient Workplace Automation, such as app packaging, app testing, deployment scheduling, reporting, readiness checks, and many others.

Those processes are still largely manually driven, completed in isolation (teams operating within silos), and often without proper velocity planning. This is highly inefficient and unsustainable given the massive volume and increasing pace of change that needs to be managed! Consequently, not keeping up causes loss of productivity, potential security vulnerabilities and possible business disruption, a bad end-user technology experience, and lower employee satisfaction.

Workplace Automation sets out to solve all this by keeping your IT estate tightly managed and constantly up-to-date. But what exactly is Workplace Automation? Below, I tried to define it in layman terms using 100 words or less (I managed in 54 words). 

Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) is a super hot topic with our customers right now as it promises to enable Work-From-Anywhere strategies securely and productively while drastically reducing the licensing and infrastructure costs required versus previous cloud desktop offerings. It also simplifies IT management and keeps your applications and users more secure as there are fewer opportunities for vulnerabilities. 

But what many organizations don't understand until they are committed is that moving onto this new Microsoft virtualization offering has big implications on your application management strategy. Without technology like WVD, organizations would be stuck creating several gold images and testing applications against multiple OS environments, resulting in a constant struggle to keep track of constant updates, version control, etc. for on-premise applications.

For months, there have been hints. Microsoft watchers like Mary J. Foley, Zac Bowden, and Tom Warren have been talking about an upcoming "big update" for at least twelve months. Now, Microsoft announced that on June 24th, 2021 at 11 am EST they will provide more details about their upcoming "next generation of Windows". But should we expect a completely new OS?

For the past five and a half years, we at Juriba have documented Microsoft's Windows 10 Release and End-of-Life Dates and analyzed any Service Channel updates. For example, in 2019 we wrote about the fact that Microsoft made 19H2 a cumulative update and decoupled new features from its bi-annual Feature Updates starting with its 20H1 release. While we have to wait for June 24th, 2021 for the official announcements, I wanted to quickly do a write-up of what we actually know and put things in perspective.

Spoiler alert: Don't panic (yet).

While Windows 10 was touted initially as the fastest adopted OS in Microsoft history and Gartner predicted that 80% of enterprises would have completed or at least started their migration by the end of 2018, Windows 10 reached more than 50 percent market share in August 2019 — more than four years after its initial release! 

As of January 14th, 2020, Windows 7 is officially dead. While you can buy extended support until 2023, every month you are not moving to Windows 10 is going to cost you dearly. In addition to the pricey ESU fees, you are exposing your environment to security vulnerabilities that can result in costly data breaches, malware attacks, or other problems. Your employee technology experience will decline, resulting in lower talent retention rates as well as productivity loss. And the list goes on. The point is, enterprises simply cannot afford to not upgrade as quickly as possible. 

On May 30 and July 2, Juriba's CTO, Barry Angell, presented a session entitled 'How to get your executive management fired up about Evergreen IT after your Windows 10 migration' at the Ivanti Windows 10 Summit. The conference was hosted entirely online and it is still available to watch on-demand.

A few weeks ago, I participated in two interesting sessions at the Microsoft Ignite Tour: one about Microsoft Autopilot, which we have extensively covered in the past, and one about Desktop Analytics, which is the forthcoming upgrade to Microsoft's Windows Analytics telemetry tool. With the release due shortly, we thought we would share some information on this significant update.

Last month, we partnered with Flexera to present the webinar entitled "Time is up for Windows 7: How to position your organization for Windows 10 and beyond" hosted by myself and Adam Jeffries, Senior Solution Engineer at Flexera.

Last month we wrote a detailed post about the different update channels to choose from for Microsoft 365 (Office 365 ProPlus) based on your organization's needs, as well as the name changes that have occurred in the products over the last year. Now we are updating this post about the different plan options that Microsoft has for enterprises. We will be discussing Office 365 E1, E3, and E5, Microsoft Apps for enterprise, and Microsoft 365 E3, E5, F1, and F3. From pricing to productivity to security, each plan offers a deeper or more shallow dive into the Microsoft ecosystem.

There is no doubt that Microsoft 365 (M365) is one of the biggest drivers for revenue and new business at the moment for Microsoft. Due to the pandemic and the shift to remote work, Microsoft Teams usage has grown by 894% since the pandemic began (Aternity). According to Forrester, remote work levels will settle in at about three times more than what they were pre-pandemic by the end of 2021. This means that enterprises now need to move quickly to a more permanent solution to keep employees happy and productivity up.

But organizations with complex on-premise email environments who are looking to move to M365 are finding the transition rocky and cumbersome if done using spreadsheets or cobbled together databases.

But there is a better (and much faster) way! Over the past few years, we at Juriba have been fortunate to help enterprises manage several very large and complex Exchange on-premise to Microsoft 365 migration projects — readying more than one million mailboxes for migration so far. This allowed us to fine tune an already highly automated (and therefore accelerated) transformation process — condensing dozens of manual, repetitive, and labour-intensive tasks into a simple 2-click process. Here is how it is done.

Office 365, Microsoft's SaaS version of its Office Suite, has grown even more popular in recent months. Organizations, especially those that have already moved over to Windows 10, are starting or planning to adopt Office 365 across their IT environment. The move to Office 365 also needs to go fast for enterprises that are still running Office 2010, as that product goes end-of-life in October, and there will be no extended support from Microsoft.

Taking the above into consideration, many businesses have turned to Microsoft's Readiness Toolkit for Office add-ins and VBA (hereafter referred to as Readiness Toolkit) to help prepare for the migration. This post will take a closer look at what the Readiness Toolkit is, what it can and can't do, and how to maximize its potential.

Over the past few years, we have seen our fair share of failed and dangerously inefficient enterprise attempts to keep Windows 10 and Office 365 Servicing up-to-date. Often, the organization took longer than anticipated to run through the first initial migration, skipped an update to come up for air, just to drown under the workload of the feature update roll out, for which it had vastly underestimated the risk and work effort. Ever worse, these updates are often managed manually, with antiquated and inadequate project management practices!

If you recently tried to find anything on Microsoft Office — for example on the enterprise section of Office.com — you might have noticed that there isn't much mention of Microsoft's on-premise productivity application suite anymore.

The vast majority of Microsoft's marketing communication and sales conversation is about Office 365! This is not an oversight or a temporary marketing campaign — but rather a strategic push to move enterprise customers away from the perpetually licensed Office fat client and onto the subscription-based, always up-to-date Office 365. Moreover, now that Office 2019 is about to be released, many enterprises are asking themselves: "Should we consider Office 2019, or is it not the right time to switch to Office 365 ProPlus?"

LONDON, 3 July 2019 -- Juriba has announced that its flagship software Dashworks has been accepted into the G-Cloud 11 framework, part of the UK Government’s digital marketplace.

It's been a long time coming, but it is finally here — our brand-new Windows-as-a-Service Management Project Plan Template! And I am thrilled to finally share with you some details on it.

This brand-new project plan template is the sequel to our extremely successful Windows 10 Enterprise Migration Project Plan that was originally published in September of 2015. While the previous project plan focused on the initial migration to Microsoft's new operating system, this new project plan enables technology executives, IT pros, and BAU managers to plan and execute their ongoing Windows-as-a-Service update management in the most effective way possible.

LONDON, 2 July 2018 -- Juriba has announced that its flagship software Dashworks has been accepted into the G-Cloud 10 framework, part of the UK Government’s digital marketplace.

If you look at how IT traditionally spent its investment dollars, there would be a distinct requirement for a positive return on investment by the end of the first three years. Many were long-term IT investments that would determine how you would operate in the next ten to twelve years, and resulted in the definition of many established IT management practices.

But those ancient IT processes and policies used to manage legacy apps are inadequate to handle modern technology updates. Today, most enterprises are much more agile, having moved applications into the cloud, or utilizing the power of Software-as-a-Service. However, most are still maintaining a layer of dinosaur legacy applications and other mission-critical on-premise software in massive data centers. Since most IT organizations are unable or unwilling to change how they manage IT, they still use IT processes and policies that date back more than twenty years!

The quality of customer service has a massive impact on how consumers interact with the service provider — whether that provider is an internal department, an outsource partner, or a company providing goods and services externally. Studies have shown that one out of two customers will stop doing business with a company because of a poor service experience.

That is why most consumers, 71% in fact, prefer firms that give them the ability to solve most service issues on their own. While this might not surprise you, it might shock you to know that an astonishing 38% of consumers would rather clean a toilet than speak to a customer service representative!

Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) is a super hot topic with our customers right now as it promises to enable Work-From-Anywhere strategies securely and productively while drastically reducing the licensing and infrastructure costs required versus previous cloud desktop offerings. It also simplifies IT management and keeps your applications and users more secure as there are fewer opportunities for vulnerabilities. 

But what many organizations don't understand until they are committed is that moving onto this new Microsoft virtualization offering has big implications on your application management strategy. Without technology like WVD, organizations would be stuck creating several gold images and testing applications against multiple OS environments, resulting in a constant struggle to keep track of constant updates, version control, etc. for on-premise applications.

To many, Microsoft's Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD) is still a mystery. Although it has been around since 2019 and demand for it increased drastically over the last year when employees suddenly found themselves working from home full time, many organizations still don't fully understand it or don't have it on their radar as something they possibly need to implement.

And if you do research it, it is all too easy to get lost in the technical detail. If you are working in the Modern Workplace, Business-as-Usual, or on an IT Transformation team and you find yourself thinking that WVD is something your boss should explore further, then this post is for you. We define what Windows Virtual Desktop is (in less than 100 words using non-technical language) and map out three things any Head of Workplace needs to know now.

In early June of last year, on their public career page, Microsoft posted a job opening for a program manager for their Microsoft Cloud PC team. In the post, Microsoft gave few details and simply described Cloud PC as a "modern, elastic, cloud-based Windows experience [that] will allow organizations to stay current in a more simplistic and scalable manner". 

Today, I want to explain how the Cloud PC anticipation fits into Microsoft's already-existing virtualization strategy, highlight exactly what we know so far about Cloud PC, and — given the limited amount of information — take a stab at the impact that I think Cloud PC will have on your constant upgrade problem (or, as we call it, your need for Evergreen IT). 

In the last few years, enterprise IT departments have faced a unique set of challenges: On the one hand, they have morphed from a supporting entity to a business enabler, and are maintaining increasingly complex IT landscapes whilst battling significantly larger cyber security threats than ever before. On the other hand, they have to manage more change with fewer resources and stagnant or minimally-increasing budgets.

A few weeks ago, we spoke about the Digital Workplace and how it came a long way from being an abstract concept that a lot of companies saw value in, but did not have the technology to support their needs properly, to becoming a reality for a lot of enterprises as they embraced server-hosted virtual desktops.

As organizations are now embarking on their Windows 10 migrations, as well as considering Evergreen IT as a long-term IT goal in order to become more agile, scalable and flexible, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure is experiencing a technology-induced revival. It's been a much slower adoption than many analysts expected, but more companies are now virtualizing desktops than ever before!

Gartner expected the hosted virtual desktop market to grow to 76 million users by the end of this year. And it seems the growth is not slowing down anytime soon. Most analysts forecast anywhere from 8.9% CAGR (IDC for the entire VCC market) up to 27% (depending on the analysts' definition of VDI) during the period 2016-2020. 

On June 30th, 2021, Julia Bell, David Higginbotham, and I hosted a webinar entitled "How To Build Your Business Case For Automating Your App Packaging & Testing." If you haven't had a chance to watch it, I highly recommend you watch the recording we made available on demand.

This high-level 30+ minute webinar included a lot of insights into why executives should invest in automated application testing and packaging, and also gave practical advice on how to present the business case to your executives so they immediately understand why this often overlooked area of IT automation is crucial in today's complex environments.

Test & Package Applications Faster With Automation

A few weeks ago, I attended the Flexera's Application Packaging Roundtable webinar about MSIX which was very interesting and included application management people from both customer organizations and service integrators. It got me thinking: Microsoft has been touting MSIX for two years now and despite the tremendous benefits the new packaging format brings, it seems like neither software vendors or end-user enterprises have really embraced it yet.

There is no doubt in my mind that MSIX is the future of application packaging — so why haven't enterprises fully bought into it yet? What are the roadblocks they are facing? Let's have a closer look at that today.

Application packaging and testing hasn't changed much over the past twenty years — until now. Last month, we detailed some of the major historical changes up until the present, from MSI Installer to MSIX and beyond. Today, I want to walk you through why self-service is intrinsically linked with the future of app packaging and testing and how Juriba's AppM Platform enables you to do this right now.

 With the Windows 2003 Server end of life time bomb now passed on July 14^th 2015, we thought we would take the time to document our advice for Server 2003 migration project planning activities based on our own server migration experience. Download our Server 2003 Project Plan for free.

With so many Enterprises stuck on version 1809 of Windows 10, it is not surprising to see organizations looking towards the open market to find a solution to the ongoing Windows 10 update problem. Microsoft has a well-oiled pitch to leverage Desktop Analytics as the means for managing this sometimes complex upgrade process. Upon first glance, their proposal makes a lot of sense: it is a free Microsoft-developed service that is specifically designed to provide "insight and intelligence for you to make more informed decisions about the update readiness of your Windows clients."

However, many large organizations find out very quickly that, while the tool gives useful data, it is by no means sufficient to manage the entire process. This leads to a lot of wasted time and resources and, of course, frustration. Today, I want to map out the delta between Desktop Analytics and Juriba Dashworks, a dedicated Windows Servicing Management tool, and provide our recommendations for how you can still utilize Microsoft's free service in the most efficient way. To do this, I want to compare some of the functionality side by side. This won't be an exhaustive list, but it will touch on the key aspects.

Hi there. My name is Carrie Woods and, in February of this year, I joined Juriba as the new Director of Global Alliances. I have been working in the software world for the last 20 years in services and channel roles for ServiceNow, Binary Tree, and Quest Software. I am thrilled to be leading the partner program at Juriba now.

My goal is simple: create a healthy and resilient partner ecosystem that relies on long-term relationships to the benefit of all parties involved — Juriba, our partners, and of course our joint customers. So far, it has been an exciting few weeks and I wanted to share some details of our new Partner Program with you.

Traditionally, large IT transformations were fairly autonomous, one-off, big-bang migration projects, lasting between 2 to 5 years on average, depending on the scope of the project. Nowadays, with the velocity of change steadily increasing to the point where updates have to be run on a continuous or basis, it is imperative to manage our IT environments in an Agile and Evergreen manner.

Is your organisation looking to Import data from your hardware vendor into Dashworks and manage devices in the supply chain before they are connected to the network? This new preview release is designed to help our customers better manage their asset lifecycle. Find out more on how to take control of your stock inventory.

Significant investment in product development has always been a huge priority for Juriba as we pursue our mission to cement our status as the world's leading software platform for enterprise Evergreen IT and IT transformation management.

But in 2021, thanks to our almost explosive growth and the investment by BGF in 2020, Juriba is able to kick its product development into hyper-drive. I am thrilled to announce that we have recently committed to a significant multi-million dollar, multi-year investment focusing on cloud capabilities, enhancing Dashworks' feature set, deepening the platform's integrations, and much more.

A lot has happened at Juriba in the last 12 months. The UK and Ireland’s most active investor in growth businesses, BFG, invested in Juriba to fuel accelerated product development and drive international scale, we acquired AppAvail and launched our new AppM automated application packaging and testing solution, and we kicked our product development into hyperdrive by committing to a multi-year, multi-million dollar investment into our product roadmap. 

To better communicate the significant improvements and explosive growth our product portfolio and Juriba as a company have gone through in the past year, we completely revamped our website. Most importantly, it not only reflects our new value propositioning and messaging, but it is less technical and more business problem-focused, and user-friendly! Let's have a look.

Hi there. My name is Carrie Woods and, in February of this year, I joined Juriba as the new Director of Global Alliances. I have been working in the software world for the last 20 years in services and channel roles for ServiceNow, Binary Tree, and Quest Software. I am thrilled to be leading the partner program at Juriba now.

My goal is simple: create a healthy and resilient partner ecosystem that relies on long-term relationships to the benefit of all parties involved — Juriba, our partners, and of course our joint customers. So far, it has been an exciting few weeks and I wanted to share some details of our new Partner Program with you.

Traditionally, large IT transformations were fairly autonomous, one-off, big-bang migration projects, lasting between 2 to 5 years on average, depending on the scope of the project. Nowadays, with the velocity of change steadily increasing to the point where updates have to be run on a continuous or basis, it is imperative to manage our IT environments in an Agile and Evergreen manner.

On November 13th 2020, we announced the acquisition of AppAvail, a best-in-class application packaging and testing automation solution that enables non-technical product owners, developers, operations, and other team members to package and test their applications using self-service, making it a significantly faster, more reliable, and more cost-effective alternative to traditional tools. The new Juriba AppM Platform brings a tremendous amount of value-add, so I will highlight some of my favorite features to give you a glimpse of the power under the hood of our new automated packaging and smoke testing solution.

THE COMBINATION OF ATERNITY'S LEADING DIGITAL ENTERPRISE MANAGEMENT PLATFORM AND JURIBA'S EVERGREEN IT COMMAND AND CONTROL PLATFORM ENABLES THE MODERN DIGITAL ENTERPRISE.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – October 28, 2020 – Aternity^®, the enterprise-class Digital Experience Management Company™, announced today that it is partnering with Juriba, a leader in Enterprise IT migration software to improve the digital transformation experience for the enterprise. The combination of Aternity and Juriba’s powerful software platforms will provide global enterprises with the opportunity to drive accelerated digital transformation projects, while proactively managing end-user experience.